


M THE VOID 

SixYears Experience in 
Automatic Communications 



TESTER TRAVERS SMITH 





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VOICES FROM THE VOID 



VOICES FROM THE VOID 

SIX YEARS' EXPERIENCE IN 
AUTOMATIC COMMUNICATIONS 



BY 

HESTER TRAVERS SMITH 

WITH INTRODUCTION BY 

PROFESSOR Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S, 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

68 1 Fifth Avenue 



Copyright, 1919, by 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



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FOREWORD 

IN introducing this book to the public, I 
should like to say that my deepest thanks 
are due to Sir William Barrett, who has helped 
and encouraged me in every possible way, and 
to whom I largely owe my interest in Psychical 
Research. 

I also thank the sitters at my circle, who 
have always been most patient, friendly, and 
helpful; what I have written is quite as much 
a record of their work as my own. 

I am grateful to the Rev. Savell Hicks and 
Mr. Lennox Robinson, both of whom helped 
me by valuable suggestions. 

And, lastly, I dedicate "Voices from the 
Void" to my friend and fellow-worker 

"Dorothy." 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGB 

Foreword . . v 

Introduction ix 

I. Introductory i 

n. The Personality of the Control . . .13 

III. The Communicator — Evidence of the Sur- 

vival 34 

IV. Telepathy and Automatism „ . . .65 

V. "Prevision" . 89 

VI. Mediumship and the Mental Sensations 

of the Medium 104 

vii. psychometry through the medium and 

the Control 118 

VIII. Summing up 139 

Appendix: Hints to Experimenters at the 
ouija-table . . 158 



vu 



INTRODUCTION 
By Professor Sir W. F. Barrett, F.R.S. 

THE widespread and growing interest in 
psychical research has led to the publica- 
tion in recent years of many books on this sub- 
ject and on the problem of survival after 
bodily death. Many of these books are of no 
real value, owing to the uncritical habit of 
mind of the writers. The present little book 
is of a very different order, and it is therefore 
with much pleasure I heartily commend it to 
the reader. We have here the personal ex- 
periences of a gifted psychic or automatist, 
who is an educated lady, the eldest daughter 
of that distinguished man, the late Professor 
Edward Dowden. 

ix 



x INTRODUCTION 

Mrs. Travers Smith has for many years 
been a friend of mine, and has given me the 
opportunity of being present at numerous sit- 
tings since the development of her psychic 
power. I can therefore testify to the con- 
scientious care, the patience, and the wisdom 
which she has shown throughout the long and 
tedious experiments she has conducted, her 
only aim being to enlarge our knowledge in 
this difficult but important field of inquiry. As 
the reader will notice, Mrs. Travers Smith is 
not a credulous or hasty investigator; on the 
contrary, the trend of her mind is healthily 
skeptical, and hence the opinions at which she 
has arrived cannot be dismissed as the product 
of morbid curiosity or the mere will to believe. 

The experimental study of automatism 
which this book presents will therefore, I am 
convinced, be of great interest and value to 
the student of abnormal psychology. As the 
author states, at the outset of her investiga- 
tions she held the view that the phenomena ob- 



INTRODUCTION xi 

tained were merely due to the emergence of 
that part of the personality of the sitters 
below the limen or threshold of consciousness. 
Our conscious waking self speaks through the 
voluntary action of our muscles, whereas our 
subconscious or subliminal self reveals itself 
through the involuntary or automatic action 
Of our muscles. Hence in automatic writing, 
or spelling messages through the so-called 
"ouija board," the simplest explanation is that 
which Mrs. Travers Smith at first adopted, 
that automatism was merely a method of 
studying ourselves: a method by which the 
hidden part of our personality came to the 
surface, so that incidents we had forgotten, or 
impressions made upon us which were too 
feeble to excite consciousness, were unex- 
pectedly revealed. 

Doubtless this explanation covers much of 
the ground, but the careful investigator soon 
finds it is inadequate, and it becomes necessary 
to add to it telepathy from other living minds, 



xii INTRODUCTION 

and also to assume the existence of higher 
faculties in the subliminal than we are aware 
of in our ordinary conscious personality. As 
Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, one of the most critical 
and able students of the whole subject, has re- 
marked, "This extension of human faculty in 
the subliminal self shows that there is more 
of us than we are normally aware of, and sug- 
gests that the limitations imposed by our 
bodies are temporary limitations. " The ex- 
periments recorded in this volume certainly re- 
veal supernormal faculties, such as clair- 
voyance of seeing without eyes — i.e., the 
psychical perception of objects, as, for ex- 
ample, when the disarranged letters of the 
alphabet were correctly indicated although the 
sitters were effectively blindfolded. Further- 
more, we are driven to the conclusion that 
occasionally telepathy from some unseen intelli- 
gence—which purports to be a deceased per- 
son — is operative, and directs the messages 
received. These conclusions, which have been 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

reached by many competent investigators, have 
been independently arrived at by the author of 
this book from her own experiences. 

But the most interesting part of the experi- 
ments recorded by Mrs. Travers Smith is the 
evidence they afford of the origin and nature 
of what are termed the "controls" operating 
upon the automatist at different sittings. The 
word control is usually applied to the intelli- 
gence which acts directly upon the automatist, 
and which is often employed as the amanu- 
ensis or interpreter of the so-called communi- 
cator from the Unseen. Mrs. Sidgwick, in her 
critical monograph on the psychology of Mrs. 
Piper's trance phenomena, considered the con- 
trols of Mrs. Piper were nothing more than 
a real or imaginary dissociation of the person- 
ality of the medium during the trance state. 
There is much to support this view, though it 
was abandoned by Dr. Hodgson in the later 
stages of his prolonged study of Mrs. Piper, in 
favor of the spiritistic hypothesis. Hence 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

the value of Mrs. Travers Smith's study of 
these controls as affording fresh evidence of 
their origin. As will be seen, they present to 
us a collection of what appear to be wholly 
different personalities, which retain their dis- 
tinctive character throughout. If I may ex- 
press an opinion on the matter, it seems to me 
more difficult to suppose these coherent, consis- 
tent, and varied controls are merely phases of 
the personality of Mrs. Travers Smith or some 
other automatist, than to accept the conclusion 
to which Dr. Hodgson was eventually driven. 
In spite of the unquestionable personation of 
deceased individuals which is a familiar ex- 
perience among spiritualists, so cautious and 
critical an investigator as Mrs. Henry Sidg- 
wick admits that through Mrs. Piper and other 
trustworthy automatists " Veridical' (truth- 
telling) communications are received, some of 
which there is good reason to believe come 
from the dead." If this be admitted, the origin 
of the control as well as of the communicator 



INTRODUCTION xv 

becomes a question of evidence, and of the 
ultimate nature of our personality or soul. 

On this subject Dr. W. McDougall, F.R.S., 
in his masterly work Body and Mind* gives us, 
if I may say so without impertinence, a most 
luminous and trustworthy view. We must 
admit, as Dr. McDougall points out, "that the 
soul is in some sense a unitary being or entity, 
distinct from all others/' The "unity of con- 
sciousness" expresses our physical individu- 
ality, and our self-conciousness is only known 
to us "as individual coherent streams of per- 
sonal consciousness," a fact which is unintel- 
ligible unless we postulate some other ground 
for it than that of the bodily organization, or 
suppose that the soul of man is made up of the 
souls of lesser organisms. But this unity of 
consciousness, Dr. McDougall points out, "does 
not rule out the possibility that more than one 
psychic being may be associated with one 
bodily organism. It may be that the soul that 

*Body and Mind, by Dr. W. McDougall, F.R.S., p. 366. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

thinks in each of us is but the chief of a 
hierarchy of similar beings, and that this one 
alone is able to actualize in any full measure 
its capacities for conscious activity." Dr. 
McDougall then goes on to say that "One may 
see in this possibility the explanation of those 
strange and bizzare phenomena which have 
been so zealously studied in recent years under 
the head of secondary or dual personality." 

That well-known case of secondary person- 
ality, Sally Beauchamp, Dr. McDougall re- 
gards, not as a mere division of the normal 
personality, but considers that the co-con- 
sciousness shown in this case was possibly a 
distinct psychic being controlling the body of 
Miss Beauchamp. The more recent case of 
Doris Fischer supports this view — that occa- 
sionally the human body may be controlled by 
different psychic entities or souls. To attribute 
these and other cases of multiple personality, 
and cases apparently of obsession, to the sub- 
liminal self of the individual is using that 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

hypothesis, I venture to say, as a mere cloak 
for our ignorance. 

Returning to the different controls described 
by Mrs. Travers Smith, I am strongly disposed 
to consider many of them as distinct psychic 
entities, and not in all cases mere phases of 
the personality of the automatist. Doubtless, 
in some cases the "controls" are merely the 
ephemeral dream creations of the automatist, 
and have therefore only a fleeting, and appar- 
ent, personality of their own; but in other 
cases they appear to be distinct souls, and may 
once have lived in another body on earth, or 
they may be the products of the evolution of 
life in the unseen universe, temporarily pos- 
sessing the brain of the automatist. 

However, these are mere speculations, and 
we must await more evidence before we can 
arrive at any definite conclusion, beyond the 
need of extreme caution in taking these "per- 
sonations" at their face value. The general 
reader will turn with greater interest to the 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

evidence which Mrs. Travers Smith's experi- 
ments give of the proof of survival after bodily- 
death. It is only necessary to point out that 
it is imperative, especially in psychical re- 
search, to distinguish between the facts nar- 
rated and the inferences we may draw from 
these facts. There does undoubtedly appear to 
be good ground for drawing the inference that 
some of the evidence here given strongly sup- 
ports the belief in survival. In this awful and 
devastating war such evidence comes "as the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 



"My son, the world is dark with grief and graves, 
So dark that men cry out against the heavens. 
Who knows but that the darkness is in man? 
The doors of Night may be the gates of Life." 



VOICES FROM THE VOID 



VOICES FROM THE VOID 



CHAPTER I 
Introductory 

SO many valuable books have been offered 
of late to the public on the subject of 
psychic phenomena that I feel some apology 
should be made by a totally unscientific person 
like myself for adding to their number. I have 
not even the excuse that I have anything excit- 
ing or sensational to tell ; I have never attended 
a seance for materialization ; I have never seen 
a ghost. Nearly all my experiences have come 
to me through automatism, and, such as they 
are, I venture to bring them into the light on 



9, VOICES FROM THE VOID 

the chance that they may be interesting to the 
student of these matters; I can vouch for the 
fact that what I have to tell is the result of 
patient research, at private sittings, chiefly in 
my own house, and with the help of various 
friends, who were as anxious as I to add some- 
thing, however small, to the vast mass of evi- 
dence which has been accumulated on the sub- 
ject of survival after death. 

I have great faith in practical experiment — 
in fact, I feel sure that those who have actually 
taken part in seances or sittings get a view of 
psychic phenomena impossible to persons 
whose investigations have been merely theo- 
retical. Both points of view are of great 
value; in many ways the observer is better 
fitted to weigh the evidence produced by the 
practical worker than is the worker, for the 
sense of another personality controlling the 
automatist is apt to warp the judgment of the 
sitter. Many things are clear and evidential 
to the practical experimenter which appear 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

vague to the theoretical student. My reason 
for laying the results of my sittings before the 
public is that they are genuine as far as they 
go; they represent the work of a small circle 
of people, all of whom desired to get nearer to 
the truth, and approached the subject of 
psychical phenomena in a spirit unbiased as 
to the source from which such phenomena 
arise. What we accomplished may seem small, 
but it must be borne in mind by the reader that 
no help from any professional medium was 
given in any of the sittings for automatism 
quoted by me. 

Those who are willing to devote some of 
their time to the study of what is commonly 
called "spiritualism" should bear in mind that 
results are slow, uncertain, and cannot be 
forced. Indeed, one asks oneself whether time 
is well spent seeking for the few grains of gold 
one finds in the huge dust-heaps of disappoint- 
ment and dullness. The value of these golden 
grains seems immense when one has wandered 



4 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

about in a Hades of dim trivialities and even 
absurdities, spending evening after evening re- 
ceiving messages from known, or unknown, 
persons of a kind which would not do credit to 
a very mediocre letter-writer. Yet these com- 
munications purport to be what the unknown 
control has an ardent desire to get through 
from the world of mystery to those still alive! 
Then, quite unexpectedly, a few minutes may 
atone for the hours of boredom ! Many times 
I have felt inclined to give up this apparently 
hopeless pursuit, elusive and baffling as it is. 
I have even persuaded myself that I might ven- 
ture to come to a definite conclusion on the sub- 
ject, that each experiment made it more obvious 
that automatism, at any rate, is the sitter's sub- 
liminal self — neither more nor less. This theory 
simplifies the whole problem; it sets aside the 
most disturbing matter connected with things 
psychic, the possibility of an external influ- 
ence, and one can start from a firmer basis — 
i.e., that we are studying ourselves under ab- 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

normal conditions, and not holding converse 
with the spirits of other human beings, alive or 
dead. 

I must confess, however, that having worked 
more or less steadily at automatism for six or 
seven years, having started with no theory on 
the subject, and having been persuaded by 
turns that I have found this or that explana- 
tion of the phenomena which came under my 
notice — I must confess, I repeat, that for some 
time past I have been quite clear and decided 
on one point — in feeling that the subliminal 
self accounts for much and many things, but 
not for everything. I am convinced, in fact, 
that external influences of some nature work 
through us, using our senses, eyes, ears, brains, 
etc., their messages, however, being highly 
colored by the personalities of their mediums. 
I feel sure that hardly any of the communica- 
tions I have had are entirely due to subcon- 
sciousness. What the nature of these ex- 
ternal influences may be is another and a most 



6 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

interesting question, and one still more diffi- 
cult to answer. I cannot say I have found any- 
satisfactory reply to it so far. I am inclined 
to think that the communications which reach 
us come from different sources. In a few cases 
I have felt almost certain that I had spoken to 
those I knew who had passed over; they ap- 
peared to preserve their earth-memory, and 
continued to interest themselves in the mun- 
dane affairs of those they loved. 

I now pass on to the kind of experiment in 
which I personally have had long and interest- 
ing experiences. This subject will occupy 
much of my little book, so in this chapter I 
only explain, for the benefit of my less ex- 
perienced readers, the different methods of 
communication so far as I know them. 

First comes the game called "planchette," 
the apparatus for which can be purchased in 
any children's toy-shop in the "games" depart- 
ment. I need hardly describe planchette to 
any person who troubles to read a book on 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

psychical research. I only say here that plan- 
chette is the clumsiest, most primitive, and least 
satisfactory "autoscope" possible, and I should 
recommend anyone who desires to experiment 
in this field of research to avoid this particu- 
lar method. 

Next comes automatic writing and draw- 
ing. This mode of communication has pro- 
duced most interesting results without doubt, 
but there are objections to it. A pencil is held 
generally between the first and third fingers of 
the hand of the medium; it touches the paper, 
and as a rule, after some preliminary flourishes 
and twirls, the pencil begins to write coherent 
words and messages. These messages vary ac- 
cording to the communicator, and the hand- 
writing changes as different personalities ap- 
pear. Sometimes the writing is that of a child, 
then of an old person, etc. One of my objec- 
tions is that the script is generally difficult to 
decipher, as (in the nature of things) the 
pencil cannot be lifted as in ordinary handwrit- 



8 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

ing, and the MS. is full of scrawls and hard to 
read. This is not my only objection to auto- 
matic writing, which, for some unknown rea- 
son, leads in certain cases to continual pain in 
the arm, an irresistible desire to write, nervous 
upset, and consequent physical prostration. 
However, without doubt most interesting and 
evidential results have been obtained by auto- 
matic writing, and my objections to this 
method do not hold good in all cases. 

As to automatic drawing, this phenomenon: 
seems very wonderful in the case of persons 
possessing no normal faculty as artists. I have 
seen automatic drawings executed by persons, 
who in their normal state, were without either 
artistic taste or training, which would do credit 
to an art student of many years' standing. 

The third method of obtaining automatic 
messages is the one I can speak of most con- 
fidently, as almost all my work has been accom- 
plished through this "autoscope." 

In his work On the Threshold of the Unseen, 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

Sir William Barrett suggests the term "auto- 
scope" for any mechanical means whereby 
communication from the unknown may reach 
us. The unknown may be merely the medium's 
subconscious self; or it may be some super- 
normal faculty, such as clairvoyance, possessed 
by the medium; or it may be the influence of 
some extraneous mind, living or dead, acting 
upon the subconsciousness of the medium. The 
forked rod used by the dowser or water-finder 
is an autoscope, so is planchette, the ouija- 
board, etc. Although the last-named may ap- 
pear slow and tedious, it becomes rapid in the 
hands of an expert sitter. Moreover, as will 
be seen directly, the ouija-board we use, and 
which I now proceed to describe, has many 
advantages. 

The ouija-board is a table or board on which 
the letters of the alphabet are printed or writ- 
ten. The automatist's fingers rest on a small 
triangular table or "traveler," the underside 
tipped with three pads of felt. This traveler 



10 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

glides lightly over the board and spells out 
messages, darting rapidly from letter to letter. 
The best ouija-board, the one I invariably use 
myself, is a card-table covered with green 
baize, on which the letters of the alphabet, the 
numbers from o to 9, and the words "yes" and 
"no" are laid, cut out separately on small pieces 
of cardboard; over this is placed a sheet of 
plate glass, the same size as the table. The 
traveler consists of a small triangular piece of 
wood, about half an inch thick, shod with three 
small pieces of carpet felt and having on top 
a piece of soft rubber material on which the 
fingers rest. I think experimenters, who try 
the ouija-board, will, if they have any psychic 
power, soon be amazed at the rapidity with 
which the traveler flies from letter to letter. 
In our own circle the words come through so 
quickly that it is almost impossible to read 
them, and it requires an experienced short- 
hand-writer to take them down when the 
traveler moves at its maximum speed. At the 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

ouija-board the co-operation of two autom- 
atists seems best; three seems to create 
confusion. 

Automatism, practiced with patience and 
perseverance by any of the methods I have 
mentioned, presents very interesting phe- 
nomena. By means of it results of many and 
varied kinds may be obtained. During the six 
years in which I have sat more or less regularly 
at the ouija-board, I have had many interesting 
and evidential messages purporting to come 
from those who have passed over or those who 
were asleep or in a state of trance. I have 
found, as I shall show later, that for some un- 
explained reason automatism awakes in the 
medium supernormal powers which he or she 
does not possess in the normal state. Success- 
ful experiments in so-called psychometry may 
be made in this way, and a faculty for previs- 
ion undoubtedly shows itself sometimes. Of 
course, it is an open question whether these 
powers are merely awakened in the medium, or 



n VOICES FROM THE VOID 

whether an external influence is at work, as it 
professes to be. It is, I think, not advisable 
that an experimenter should advance any posi- 
tive opinion on this subject. I am quite con- 
vinced that he or she is in a supernormal state 
when sitting, and consequently is handicapped 
in criticising results. My own impression is 
that in most cases results are not by any means 
due entirely to the sitters' subconsciousness, 
but it is a matter which it is almost impossible 
to prove one way or the other. 

It is best I should leave my readers to form 
their own opinions about the incidents which 
follow; but for the sake of convenience, and 
to avoid the constant repetition of qualifying 
phrases, I shall set down occurrences in the 
form in which they came to me; that is, I shall 
assume that the messages come, as they pur- 
port to come, from intelligences outside the 
medium's subconsciousness, although this is a 
matter in which I still prefer to hold my per- 
sonal judgment in suspense. 



CHAPTER II 
The Personality of the Control 

1HAVE headed this chapter "The Person- 
ality of the Control," and before I proceed 
further perhaps it is best that I should define 
the terms "control" and "communicator." 

By "control" I mean an influence which 
associates itself with the medium and his sit- 
tings, and which appears to act in many cases 
as organizer at the other side. These controls 
introduce and fetch communicators, and fre- 
quently advise and help the mediums by ex- 
plaining how matters stand in the Unseen. 
Many people, who have worked with these con- 
trols, believe that they act as amanuenses or 

13 



14 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

interpreters between the medium and the un- 
seen communicator. As far as I can tell, this 
has not been proved to be the case. I should 
say, rather, that controls arrange the seance 
and decide who among those who wish to speak 
from the other side shall communicate. These 
controls generally give themselves quaint 
names, and sometimes say they have lived in 
distant countries many hundreds of years ago. 
This is not always the case, but it has been so 
with the majority of those I have come across. 

By "communicator" I mean the influence in- 
troduced by the control, or who comes without 
the help of a control, and gives his personal 
history, or states that he is a friend or relative 
of someone present. Such communicator may 
either have passed over or merely be asleep or 
drowsy. 

In the course of sittings extending over six 
or seven years many influences have spoken 
through our small circle. Of these some were 
obviously frauds, and impersonations were 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 15 

frequent. These disappointments are most 
dispiriting to the novice in psychic experi- 
ments. It must always be borne in mind that 
in order to attain to any firm ground from 
which one may review one's work and venture 
to form a judgment as to whether we are or are 
not in touch with the spirit world, a mass of 
evidence must be accumulated. This, of course, 
demands great patience and perseverance, and 
the experimenter must judge for himself 
whether the achieved results justify the expen- 
diture of time and labor. If the results are 
important to him, he must not be discouraged 
by many back-slidings, and he must be pre- 
pared to keep careful records of sittings, good 
and bad ; this is essential when he comes to the 
summing-up of evidence. 

I propose to deal here with the most marked 
personalities among our controls, showing 
how — even allowing that these entities are 
merely subconsciousness, parts of our men- 
tality which appear only under abnormal con- 



16 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

ditions — they preserve certain characteristics 
which are so striking that there is no pos- 
sibility of confusing one personality with 
another. 

I shall first describe a control who has been 
of great service to us in experimental work. 
He is, in fact, the only influence who has aided 
and abetted us in applying tests to our experi- 
ments, who is willing and ready to do so and 
proud of his powers in this line. As a rule we 
find controls most unwilling to submit to tests 
of any kind; indeed, they are as indignant at 
such a suggestion as one might expect a per- 
son to be who walked into a drawing-room and 
was subjected to a personal examination by his 
host. During the winter of 19 14 a small circle 
of sitters — the Rev. S. H., Mr. L., and my- 
self — did very regular work at the ouija-board 
twice weekly, and a great deal of interesting 
matter came through from various controls. 
We worked blindfold. I can answer for my- 
self, and I believe for my fellow-sitters, that 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 17 

never in the course of all the months we sat 
together did we see the board while communi- 
cations were coming through, nor did any of us 
know at the time what these communications 
were, as they were recorded in silence by a 
friend, who was obliged to take them down in 
shorthand, such was the rapidity with which 
the traveler moved from letter to letter. 

At the second or third sitting of the circle 
referred to, Peter Rooney made his appearance. 
He stated that he was an American Irishman ; 
that he had had a most undesirable career and 
spent much of his life in jail; that ten days 
before he communicated with us he had thrown 
himself under a tram-car in Boston and had 
been killed. Sir William Barrett, having made 
careful inquiries both from the Governor of 
the State prison at Boston, Mass., and from 
the Chief of Police in that city, found Peter 
Rooney's tale an entire fabrication. A certain 
Peter Rooney had fallen from a tram-car in 
August, 1 910, had suffered from a scalp 



18 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

wound, but was alive in 1914, as far as could 
be ascertained. 

On being upbraided by us for assuming a 
name and identity not his own, Peter admitted 
that he had no desire that we should know who 
he was, and that he had adopted this name as 
"it was as good as any other." He stated that 
he had been interested in psychical research in 
his lifetime, and wished to assist investigations 
of supernormal phenomena now that he had 
"passed over." He refused absolutely to give 
us any further information about himself. 

Peter has a burning desire to shine as a 
"test" control; he prefers us to work blindfold, 
and he is rashly desirous to attempt experi- 
ments. He is most uncertain in results, but, 
given a quiet room and his own mediums, he 
can do remarkable things. He is a rather 
primitive creature, has very strong likes and 
dislikes, and is very vain and fond of a dis- 
play of his powers. 

Early in our sittings he explained that he 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 19 

used various movements on the board to ex- 
press his feelings — love, hate, pleasure, annoy- 
ance, surprise, etc. We became quite familiar 
with these movements, and, blindfold as we 
always were, we quite realized Peter's changes 
of mood. Working under new conditions, a 
strange sitter, a disarranged alphabet, etc., 
Peter begins by a very careful examination of 
the alphabet ; he moves in and out between the 
letters until he has traversed the entire board, 
and in case the letters are not in the usual order 
he notes the fact carefully. He is most sensi- 
tive to noise; it seems to disturb and annoy 
him. He starts at the sound of a clock strik- 
ing or any noise in the street, and asks what it 
is. He is most impatient, and makes no allow- 
ance for any hesitation on the part of the per- 
son reading and noting down his messages, ad- 
dressing the unfortunate individual occupied in 
this somewhat difficult task as "Fool!" if he 
asks that a word or sentence be repeated. 
Among the experiments which proved sue- 



20 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

cessful with Peter, I note a few of the most 
remarkable. He was asked on one occasion to 
read something in the room, a sentence from a 
book or newspaper of which the sitters knew 
nothing. He selected a page from a calendar 
of twelve pages ; the calendar was taken from 
the wall by one of the recorders ; it was turned 
over at random, the recorder carefully avoid- 
ing looking at it, and also taking the additional 
precaution of placing a screen between it and 
the medium, Mr. L., who was already blind- 
folded securely. The exposed leaf of the cal- 
endar was then placed under the glass, still 
carefully screened. It proved, when the trans- 
script and calendar were compared, that this 
calendar had rather long quotations for each 
month. The page which was copied turned 
out to be an early spring month, which had 
been covered over long before; the sitting was 
in the late winter. 

Peter read the entire page, including the 
long quotation, perfectly correctly. Of course, 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 21 

in this case it may be open to question whether 
Mr. L., in whose house the calendar was, might 
not have had the quotation in his subconscious 
mind. I do not think this was probable, but 
I quite admit that it was possible. But even 
then it must be taken into account that there 
were twelve pages for his "subconsciousness" 
to choose from, and it would be at the best ex- 
ceedingly good guessing, as well as remark- 
able memorizing, if this were the explanation 
of what occurred. 

Peter was, and is still, very fond of tele- 
pathic experiments. He used to ask the people 
present to choose a number or a letter or even 
a word unknown to the sitters, and to write it 
on a piece of paper, and hold it under the ouija- 
table out of their range of vision. The 
traveler would then make a sudden dive over 
to the place where the paper was held, examine 
it most carefully by dipping over the table, 
touching the paper on which the numbers were 
written, and generally dart back to the correct 



n VOICES FROM THE VOID 

letters or numbers on the board. It must 
always be borne in mind that the sitters were 
blindfolded, and knew nothing of the result 
at the time. Peter is a fairly expert grapholo- 
gist, and can tell character by handwriting as 
well as the average professional. If a letter is 
laid under the glass the traveler goes over, ex- 
amines it carefully, rubbing the glass above the 
writing several times, darts back, begins gen- 
erally by mentioning the sex of the writer, then 
by degrees and with many careful examina- 
tions of the writing gives a character-sketch 
which generally proves fairly correct. With 
this experiment care is always taken, of course, 
that the handwriting is that of persons un- 
known to the sitters. Another successful ex- 
periment we have tried with Peter is that one 
sitter should be blindfolded, and that the other, 
with eyes open, should receive a short message 
from him. The message is not read aloud. 
Conditions are then reversed: the sitter who 
was blindfolded has his eyes open; the other 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 23 

sitter is blindfolded, the letters of the alphabet 
are mixed, and Peter is asked to repeat the 
message. Having done so, both sitters are 
blindfolded, the letters are mixed again, and 
Peter, for the third time, spells out the same 
message. The average success of this experi- 
ment was about 90 per cent. 

I mention these experiments as they serve to 
illustrate Peter's character as a test control. 
Who Peter is or was we do not know, but from 
years of acquaintance with him on the ouija- 
board he has become a very clearly marked 
personality to us. He evidently belongs to the 
lower middle class; is far from polished in his 
manners; has very strong likes and dislikes; 
is a very vain and rather capricious creature, 
rejoicing in his own importance, and very fond 
of display; intelligent, but not in the least in- 
tellectual; very unwilling to admit other con- 
trols to any sitting he takes part in — he is, in 
fact, an amusing and rather inelegant person, 
and seems to regard the ouija-board as a means 



24 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

of displaying a limited number of conjuring 
tricks. He is very particular about the me- 
diums through whom he communicates, and 
seems to gather his power to "see without 
eyes" from some unknown quality in certain 
sitters. I have found only a few people with 
whom he can do blindfold work; he rather 
despises sittings with open eyes, and unless a 
medium is present who has the quality neces- 
sary for blindfold sitting he seldom comes. 

I now pass on to a control who is an entire 
contrast to Peter Rooney in every respect. 
This entity calls himself "Eyen," and says he 
was an Egyptian priest who served in the 
temple of Isis in the reign of Rameses II. He 
professes to have been attracted to the sittings 
at my house by the fact that I possess a piece 
of cerecloth in which his mummy was wrapped. 
Eyen is not a test control like Peter ; he cannot 
do any ouija-work with blindfold sitters; he 
avoids all experiments as quite beneath him. 
He is extremely sentimental, much inclined to 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 25 

flatter his mediums, and most untrustworthy in 
his statements and in the controls he professes 
to send us, who generally prove to be Eyen 
himself in fancy dress. He also is most re- 
tentive in his hold of sittings, and anxious to 
exclude other controls. I have known him to 
"block the telephone," as he calls it, for a 
month at a time, and exclude any communica- 
tion except his own; the only means we have 
found useful in driving him away has been to 
hypnotize both mediums and suggest that Eyen 
should not be permitted to speak. This has 
generally proved successful — for a time at 
least; in my own case the driving out of Eyen 
always produced a struggle. When the sug- 
gestion that he should go has been made to me, 
when under hypnotic influence, I have been 
considerably shaken by him in a rather un- 
pleasant way. 

Eyen interested me for several reasons; he 
professed in the beginning of our acquaintance 
to cultivate my psychic powers and those of 



26 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

my fellow-sitter. I had repeatedly tried auto- 
matic writing without success. One evening, 
about three or four months after he appeared, 
Eyen told me he had brought a spirit-light for 
me, and that I was to give mine to the friend 
who sat with me, who had none. I asked how 
this could be done. The reply was that Eyen 
would put his hand on my head, and I was to 
place my hand on the head of my friend, and 
thus the lights would be transferred. I asked, 
"What will the result of gaining more light 
be?" Eyen replied, "You will gain psychic 
power — you will soon find you can do auto- 
matic writing, and your friend will perhaps 
draw automatically. ,, On the particular night 
I speak of no further power was developed in 
myself or my friend, but on the next occasion 
on which we sat Eyen suggested that I might 
try to write. I did so with a completely suc- 
cessful result; automatic writing came through 
quite easily to me. The drawing also was suc- 
cessful to a certain extent; the subjects Eyen 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 27 

permitted to come through were very limited! 
At first only mummies were drawn, and later 
what Eyen called "Nile flowers. " These were 
conventional in design and somewhat like the 
lotus. At first these results could only be ob- 
tained when my friend and I sat together; 
after a short time Eyen said that while Mr. 
X.'s influence was still in my hand I should be 
able to write. This I found was the case, but 
my own strength must have increased, as grad- 
ually I found I got automatic writing by my- 
self without difficulty. Eyen has proved a 
fraud and a liar in most ways, and he has been 
driven repeatedly from the board by us in con- 
sequence; but he has a very definite person- 
ality, and his smoothness, flattery, and false- 
ness are part of it. He is a most sentimental 
person, full of imagination, and he possesses 
decided powers in the direction of fiction. 
More than once he has spelt out most sensa- 
tional tales to us, the plots of which might 
quite well be of service to a writer in search of 



28 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

melodrama. He tells us stories of life in 
ancient Egypt, and describes the rites in which 
he took part in the Temple of Isis. He has 
also told us most sensational stories of the 
present day, and one very striking Italian tale 
which came through at 12 a.m. while the clocks 
were striking one New Year's Eve. 

The tale runs as follows : 

Long ago in an Italian town there lived a 
most beautiful woman. She was much sought 
after and had many lovers, but she cared only 
for one. Now, this beautiful woman was a 
most enigmatical creature, and was possessed 
of a strange smile that reminded one of the 
picture of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. 
Her lovers made no way with her. She always 
kept them at a distance. 

She was attracted by this particular man 
because he had never loved any woman; he 
did not seek her company or friendship in any 
way, and she determined to conquer him. 
Long and hopelessly she strove to attract him, 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 29 

with no success. But at last she had her wish; 
he fell desperately in love with her. Step by 
step they came nearer and nearer to each other, 
until, at last, one night he asked her to give 
him all a woman can give a man. She was 
furious at this insult to her honor, and refused 
indignantly, and in a rage the man put an end 
to her life. (When Eyen came to this point I 
asked, "Is that all? It's not a very original 
story/' ) 

"Wait," said Eyen. "The murdered woman 
left her lover something as a revenge for her 
death. She left him the Mona Lisa smile, 
which had protected her from men, so that he 
might be protected from all women and never 
love again." 

Eyen's latest development is in the role of 
poet! He has taken to writing verse, in- 
variably addressed to one of his original medi- 
ums, Mr. X. or myself. Mr. X. has driven 
him from the board of late years, and refused 
to hold any converse with him. The verses 



30 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

which Eyen addressed to Mr. X. consist of 
curses, reproaches, and regrets for this insult, 
while those addressed to me are all suavity and 
most flattering in tone. These verses came 
through me, and a friend, Mr. W., who "sits" 
here frequently. They are more or less cor- 
rect as to versification, though neither this 
friend nor I are guilty either openly or secretly 
of writing poetry! 

The next control who occurs to me calls him- 
self "Astor." He professes to be the "guide" 
of an intimate friend of mine, Miss C, who 
lives in my house. We frequently sit together, 
and Astor appears invariably and opens the 
seance. He controls Miss C.'s hand most 
powerfully; all the force, mental and physical, 
seems to come through her, and I add probably 
a kind of balance only. Astor is, of course, 
chiefly interested in Miss C.'s concerns, but 
in so far as hers are connected with mine, he 
is deeply interested in me also, and often de- 
votes most of his attention to me at a sitting. 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 31 

He dives across the table towards me, and 
presses the traveler against my arm, as if con- 
tact with me gave him insight into my mental 
state. 

Astor is an intelligent creature, not given 
much to flattery — indeed, often very plain- 
spoken. His leading characteristic is that he 
is clairvoyant and sees vivid pictures of the 
future. His prophecies are indefinite as to 
time. He admits that time cannot be measured 
in his sphere. He has predicted some quite 
unforeseen events in a most remarkable way. 
In one case he made what seemed a most rash 
and absurd prophecy about a business affair 
of my own, at which I laughed, I remember, 
but within a week this totally unlikely event 
came true. Astor is very clear in his state- 
ments, does not hedge when questioned as 
Eyen does, and holds on to his predictions 
stoutly, although the course of time may not 
have justified them. He always maintains that 
they will come true if we have patience, and 



32 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

that he cannot measure time. He is a much 
more rational creature than Peter or Eyen; 
generally ready to have his say, and then to 
allow others to speak, he is grave and moderate 
in tone, and allows no trifling on the part of 
his mediums. 

The last control I shall speak of here is one 
of my own who is not yet an intimate ac- 
quaintance, as she came only a few months 
ago. She calls herself "Shamar," says she was 
a Hindoo, and that she is my spirit guide, Eyen 
being merely "the guide of my astral !" 
Shamar has undertaken to conduct most of my 
sittings lately; she devotes herself to culti- 
vating my powers by sending me genuine com- 
munications. She says she is very fond of 
sending me messages from living persons who 
are asleep or drowsy. In these cases absolute 
proof is, of course, possible sometimes. Twice 
lately I had conversations with friends who 
stated they were in a drowsy state, and the 
information I received through them proved 



PERSONALITY OF THE CONTROL 33 

true in every respect. So far as I know her, 
Shamar is sincere; she makes no magnificent 
promises, and she has been very faithful in 
bringing interesting communicators. She is 
quite different from Peter, Eyen, and Astor. 
She has no sense of humor ; she never indulges 
in anything of an imaginative nature; she 
never foretells future events; she comes and 
offers to bring someone who will interest me, 
or if I (as I seldom do) ask for any special 
person she will send him if she can. She does 
not indulge in any platitudes; she is simple 
and apparently truthful; she seems to believe 
she has certain work to do at a sitting, and 
she does it to the best of her ability. 

I may add that both Astor and Shamar have 
remarkable gifts for elucidating the history of 
objects placed on the board. "Psychometry," 
as it is commonly called, is a gift which both 
controls possess, apparently; but how much of 
this is due to special sitters I am unable to say. 



CHAPTER III 

The Communicator — Evidence of 
Survival 

I HAVE now arrived at the most vitally in- 
teresting question for us all in connection 
with psychical research. Have we any evi- 
dence of the survival and identity of those who 
have left the visible world? Is any light 
thrown on this great problem by messages re- 
ceived through the medium? And from my 
small personal experience I can reply with sin- 
cerity I have had some evidence which, if not 
entirely convincing, points so strongly to the 
fact that we survive what is called death that 
it requires more credulity to doubt the fact 
than to believe it. But any evidence I have 

34 



THE COMMUNICATOR 35 

had of the survival of those who have died is 
slight, and part of what has been convincing 
to me is not so from a scientific point of view. 
In this chapter I shall review briefly my ex- 
perience with what seem genuine communi- 
cators. I shall give an account first of those I 
think evidential from the "test" point of view 
and secondly some cases which, though not 
conclusive, were most convincing from the 
nature of the messages. I leave my readers to 
draw their own conclusions. If I may venture 
to advise persons who long to speak once more 
with those they have loved, who have vanished 
into darkness, I should say it is wise and sane 
not to make the attempt. The chances against 
genuine communication are ten to one ; the dis- 
appointments and doubts connected with the 
experiment are great. 

Personally, I would not make any effort to 
speak to the beloved dead through automatic 
writing or the ouija-board. The evidence they 
offer of their identity is too ephemeral and un- 



36 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

satisfactory; and as I would not undertake 
these experiments for myself, I would not 
willingly help others to risk them, unless in 
very exceptional cases, when I had fully ex- 
plained my own doubts on the subject and had 
undertaken no responsibility that the messages 
would be genuine. On the other hand, if, in 
the course of sittings at the ouija-table, dear 
and familiar names have appeared, I have 
patiently tried to discover whether they were 
genuine or the reverse, and in some cases, I 
am bound to admit, I was inclined to think 
that they were not impersonations. 

I fear the observations I have just made 
may be very distasteful to many who approach 
this subject from the spiritualist point of view. 
I cannot offer these people any apology for my 
attitude. It may be that they receive genuine 
help and comfort from their faith in these 
manifestations from the Unseen ; if so, I only 
trust that they may continue to find this com- 
fort and help. But I do not attempt to address 



THE COMMUNICATOR 37 

them. What I have to say will interest the 
student of psychic matters only. 

In almost all cases where a discarnate spirit 
professes to speak I ask for an account of its 
passing over. These accounts vary very little ; 
they all retain the same features, though some 
are more detailed than others. In all cases a 
period of darkness is described as occurring 
almost immediately after death. This dark- 
ness appears to be a penance or purgatory for 
the soul left thus in lonely and silent medita- 
tion, and it is evidently a period of consider- 
able suffering. Yet during this time of dark- 
ness the spirit seems to be permitted to speak 
to those on earth if such opportunity be offered 
to it. This state does not seem to last long, 
not more than a week or ten days, so far as I 
can judge from communicators who come re- 
peatedly and speak of their present condition. 
They frequently say that when light came, 
someone was near them, who led them away to 
the place where their "work" was. What the 



38 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

nature of this "work" is, they seem unable 
to explain. Many communicators, when de- 
scribing their "passing," appear to have had a 
vision of the body before the darkness en- 
veloped them. Frequently when soldiers killed 
in battle have spoken they became aware that 
they had died. They tell how the battlefield 
lay below them, with all the horror of its de- 
tails, and how they saw their own bodies lying 
on the field. Sometimes the vision extends, 
and they see the body being carried away and 
buried. In the same way, some of those who 
die in their beds describe the body lying there 
as when the spirit rose from it. They can 
see the nurses preparing it for burial, the 
coffin, etc. 

Beyond the period of darkness, I have had 
no clear or definite account of the region in 
which the spirit dwells or the nature, of its oc- 
cupations. Some sitters known to me, who 
approach the subject in a more religious and 
less experimental spirit than myself, have had 



THE COMMUNICATOR 39 

perfectly lucid accounts of the future state — 
even the flowers and animals in the sphere to 
which the spirit is led after the first darkness 
is past were described in detail. And in the 
communications received by this circle the 
meeting of those who had been dear to each 
other on earth seemed assured. All was peace, 
love, and tranquillity. The only promise of re- 
union I have obtained from any communicator 
is that those whose spirits are merged in each 
other in the fullest sense of the word — souls 
created at the same moment (though perhaps 
sent on their earthly pilgrimage at different 
times) — will be merged in each other in the 
future state. 

From reviewing hundreds of messages from 
those who have passed away, I gather that the 
spirit retains its earth-memory for a time. The 
time seems to vary with the nature of the indi- 
vidual. The more rarefied and exalted the 
soul during its earth-life, the shorter its span 
of earth-memory seems to be after it has 



40 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

passed through the barrier. These more 
highly developed souls seem gradually to rise 
into a region from which it is perilous to touch 
the earth atmosphere, except for a few minutes 
at a time. After this they disappear 
altogether. Quite lately I had an instance of 
this. The communicator was a connection of 
my own, a very refined, gentle, intellectual per- 
sonality in his earth-life. He came to the 
ouija-board repeatedly for some time while I 
happened to be in touch with his family, and 
spoke in a way which was very evidential to 
them ; he appeared to find it impossible to com- 
municate for more than a few minutes at a 
time. Then there would be a long pause, and 
he would come again. He told us that after a 
time he would be unable to speak. He had died 
very suddenly, and seemed to have passed 
quickly to a state of great peace and happi- 
ness, though he gave us no account of his sur- 
roundings or occupations; he said it was for- 



THE COMMUNICATOR 41 

bidden, and would, in any case, be incompre- 
hensible to those still alive. 

I shall now give details of two cases of com- 
munications received by me in conjunction 
with another sitter (different in each case) 
through the ouija-board, which consisted of 
facts absolutely unknown to the mediums, and 
which were subsequently verified in every de- 
tail. The first of these two cases came through 
in the winter of 191 3. Our circle — which I 
have already referred to in Chapter II — con- 
sisted at that time of three sitters — Mr. L., the 
Rev. S. H., and myself, and a friend who acted 
as amanuensis and shorthand-writer. During 
the sittings of this circle, which continued 
twice weekly for a year or more, we had most 
remarkable results — the more so because we 
sat blindfolded. I shall give a fuller account 
of these sittings in my chapter on Thought 
Transference. It seemed that the really mar- 
velous power of "seeing without eyes" rested 
in this instance largely, or perhaps completely, 



m VOICES FROM THE VOID 

with Mr. L. After he had left Dublin and the 
circle was broken, the Rev. S. H. and I re- 
peatedly tried to get messages blindfolded, but 
without success. I have succeeded in getting 
blindfold work through with other mediums, 
but none of them have the rapidity and cer- 
tainty possessed by Mr. L. 

The message in question came very slowly — 
quite unlike others we had had, which were 
spelt out so rapidly that our shorthand-writer 
could scarcely put them down quickly enough. 
It seemed that this communicator was very 
weak. She gave her name (I shall call her 
"Alice Franks"). Her address was a house 
in Upper Norwood, and she told us the name 
and date of the newspaper in which her death 
was announced. The message was not a long 
one; she described her last illness, and said 
death had just occurred, and had been a happy 
release from pain. The communication was 
not in itself especially interesting — many such 
come to a circle of practiced sitters — the evi- 



THE COMMUNICATOR 43 

dence of identity was what was remarkable. 
The lady was absolutely unknown to anyone 
present, but on investigation every statement 
made by her at the ouija-board proved correct. 

Sir William Barrett was in a position to 
make a careful investigation of this case, 
which he kindly did, and learnt from the lady's 
relatives that the information we had received 
was undoubtedly genuine, and must have been 
conveyed to us in some supernormal manner. 

I give here a portion of the scrip of this 
message : 

Mrs. Travers Smith, the Rev. S. H., Mr. L. 
(All blindfolded.) 

(For whom is this message?) Everybody. 
( Spell your name. ) Alice Franks. ( Can't you 
work quicker?) No. (Go on, please.) Your 
overbearing attitude will not make me go any 
faster. I lived and died at . . . Upper Nor- 
wood. (Did you die recently?) Yes. (What 
date?) ... I was unconscious for many days; 
I believe that I passed over between Friday 



44 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

and yesterday morning. (Have you anything 
special to say?) My pain was intense, and I 
am still in pain. Good-bye." 

A more striking instance of evidence of 
identity is one which is quoted by Sir William 
Barrett in his recent book, On the Threshold 
of the Unseen, the "pearl tie-pin case." This 
came through one evening when my friend 
Miss C. and I were sitting together. As in the 
case of Alice Franks, this message was very 
brief, and Miss C. and I attached no impor- 
tance to it at the time. The name of a young 
cousin of Miss C/s was spelt out on the board. 
He had recently been killed at the front, and 
he stated that he had been engaged to a girl 
whose name and address he gave in full, and 
asked that his mother should be told that he 
wished her to give his fiancee his pearl tie-pin 
in memory of him. The boy was only nineteen 
when he was killed, and this seemed a most 
unlikely story. Miss C. laughed at it, and 
would not have investigated it but that I asked 



THE COMMUNICATOR 45 

her to write to the address given and discover 
if the person merun:, „ . cl there. This let- 
ter was returned .o ~LIss C. as incorrectly ad- 
dressed, and we dismissed the case as hopeless. 
Some time afterwards the young officer's rela- 
tives heard that he had willed all his posses- 
sions to a girl whose name was the same as the 
one spelt out to us on the ouija-board — though 
the address was different — and to whom he 
had been privately engaged. This fact was ab- 
solutely unknown to his relatives. 

Now, these two cases, to my thinking, can 
only be explained in one way — an ardent desire 
on the part of some external influence to com- 
municate with this world. Surely it seems 
irrational to think that these messages came 
from any source other than the discarnate 
spirits of these two persons. Something more 
improbable and incredible may be suggested by 
way of explanation. I am inclined to believe 
what is obvious. 

I give these instances as being two of the 



46 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

most evidential we have had of survival. 
Others have come to us of a like nature, but 
they are few and far between compared to 
those to which I now pass : cases which do not 
furnish definite proof of identity, but which 
were most convincing in their substance and in 
the manner they were expressed. 

The first I mention came from a brother of 
Miss C.'s, who was killed in Gallipoli. Miss C. 
did not sit until some time after his death, but 
almost immediately after she began, he came 
with urgent messages for his mother. Mrs. C. 
had been overwhelmed with grief at the loss 
of her son, and even after more than a year 
and a half she was quite inconsolable. Lieu- 
tenant C. had been a most pure and innocent- 
minded young man — a very spiritual person, in 
fact, and these messages were all of the same 
nature, begging Miss C. to tell his mother that 
her grief was keeping back his progress in the 
new sphere, and that he was unable to rise 
until she ceased to mourn for him. He de- 



THE COMMUNICATOR 47 

scribed himself as "caught in the miasma of 
desire that shrouds the earth." Miss C. told 
her mother, who made every effort to be more 
cheerful and forget her sorrow, and the last 
time Miss C.'s brother spoke to her he seemed 
to be getting free from the fetters which 
bound him to earth. He said he did not ex- 
pect to be able to speak again. These messages 
were very convincing to Miss C. Those urg- 
ing her to speak to her mother came through 
very rapidly, and gave her the sensation of in- 
tense anxiety and excitement. 

I had a strange experience myself with a 
communicator — a man who had been a friend 
of mine for many years, and from whom I had 
been estranged for a long time before his 
death. This man died very suddenly of acute 
appendicitis, and on the evening of his death I 
happened to be sitting. A mutual friend of 
his and mine, who had passed over, communi- 
cated by the board, and asked me whether I 
knew that Mr. V. was dead. I said I did not, 



48 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

and she suggested that I should ring up the 
private hospital where he was. I did so, and 
found that he had died about half an hour 
before. I returned to the board, and the same 
communicator told me that he would speak to 
me at the next sitting. He came the following 
week and for six weeks after, and we could 
get no other communications through. He 
seemed intensely anxious to explain the very 
complicated circumstances which had induced 
me to drop his acquaintance. This he did in 
a way which, I am bound to confess, I should 
never have thought of. At last his persistency 
wearied us, and I told him I could not speak 
to him any more. He replied that he would 
not try to come again, and bid me farewell 
with the remark, "Love and hate make life 
a ride in the dark." 

The wording of these communications and 
the anxiety this man showed to explain very 
strange circumstances connected with his life 
left no doubt in my mind that I was speaking 



THE COMMUNICATOR 49 

directly to his discarnate spirit; but this is one 
of the cases that, from its private nature and 
also because there was no direct proof of 
identity further than what I have mentioned, 
could only appeal to those who knew him in- 
timately. 

Although Sir William Barrett has described 
the "Hugh Lane case" in his latest book, I feel 
my readers may be interested to hear what I 
have to say of it first hand. The circum- 
stances were these: I knew Sir Hugh Lane 
personally, and had heard he had gone to 
America about a fortnight before the sinking 
of the Lusitania. I had no idea why he had 
gone or how long he intended to stay. About 
five o'clock on the day we heard of the loss of 
the Lusitania, I saw posters on my way home 
saying "Lusitania reported sinking." I did 
not buy a paper, and had no personal interest 
in the sinking ship, as I knew of no one on 
board. Sir Hugh Lane's name did not occur 
to me, probably because he had been in Amer- 



50 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

ica such a very short time. A sitting was ar- 
ranged for 8.30 o'clock that evening, and 
before we began I felt a strange sensation of 
depression, so much so that I went up to my 
bedroom and sat alone for a short time. I 
could not have said why this feeling got hold 
of me; there was no special reason for it that 
I knew of. At 8.30 o'clock I came down, and 
we began our sitting. The Rev. Savell Hicks 
recorded in silence, while Mr. Lennox Robin- 
son and I sat blindfolded and talked to each 
other while the message was being spelled out 
by our hands. After a couple of minutes Mr. 
Hicks said, "Would you like to know who is 
speaking? It is Sir Hugh Lane, and he says 
he has been drowned, and was on board the 
Lusitania" We were terribly shocked — we 
both knew Sir Hugh — and asked Mr. Hicks to 
read the message to us. It ran as follows: 
First the name of our usual control, Peter; 
then, "Pray for Hugh Lane." Then, on being 
asked who was speaking, "I am Hugh Lane; 



THE COMMUNICATOR 51 

all is dark," came through. At this moment a 
stop-press edition of the evening paper was 
called in the street, and Mr. Robinson ran 
down and bought one. When he came up to 
me he pointed to the name of Sir Hugh Lane 
among the passengers. We were both much 
distressed, but continued our sitting. Sir 
Hugh Lane described the scene on board 
the Lusitania. Panic, then boats lowered — 
"Women went first," he said. He stated that 
he was last in an overcrowded boat, fell over, 
and lost all memory until he "saw a light" at 
our sitting. He sent me a message about our 
last meeting which was quite evidential so far 
as I could tell, and gave me greetings and 
advice for very intimate friends of his and 
mine in Dublin. The number of his cabin and 
the name of a fellow-passenger given by him 
were incorrect, so far as I can discover. 

This communication was very striking, but 
what followed was more evidential in my opin- 
ion. Sir Hugh Lane continued to come, and 



52 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

at each sitting at which he appeared he begged 
us to restrain any efforts of those who might 
wish to erect a memorial gallery to him in 
Dublin. This he seemed to have a horror of. 
At the same time he was most anxious that 
we should make every effort to have the con- 
ditions of the codicil to his will carried out. 
He wishes his pictures to come back to this 
city, and is much disturbed because the trus- 
tees of the National Gallery are very justly re- 
luctant to restore them to Dublin. 

We had a very strange sitting — Mr. Len- 
nox Robinson and I — last September, at which 
Sir William Barrett was present. Before the 
sitting I had said to Sir William Barrett that 
I thought the remarks of various people were 
justified who considered the "Hugh Lane 
case" evidential to the sitters — who knew him 
personally — but not to the outside public. After 
a communication had come through from a 
man who said he died in Sheffield, and which 
in some particulars proved to be correct — it 



THE COMMUNICATOR 53 

was not possible to investigate them all — Sir 
Hugh Lane came to the board, seized Mr. Rob- 
inson's arm, as he always does, and after much 
difficulty in reading the message we discovered 
that he was much annoyed with me because of 
the way I had spoken to Sir William Barrett 
about his first communication on the night 
after the Lusitania sank. He was most violent 
on this occasion, seizing Mr. Robinson's arm 
and driving it about so forcibly that the 
traveler fell off the table more than once. 
Since then whenever we — Mr. Robinson and 
I — have sat together, the same thing has hap- 
pened. Sir Hugh has come repeatedly, and 
always with the same message. He begs that 
we shall believe that it was really he who spoke 
to us that night when the Lusitania sank. He 
says any future words he speaks to us or any- 
one else will be discredited if we put no faith 
in the first he spoke after he died. 

The latest message we have had from Sir 
Hugh referred to the Lane Picture meeting 



54 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

which was to be held at the Mansion House, 
Dublin, on January 29th, 191 8. It came to 
Mr. Robinson and me on January 22nd, 191 8. 
It ran as follows: 

"Hugh Lane." (We said we wanted Peter 
instead, as we wished to do telepathic experi- 
ments.) "I will not go. I want to speak, and 
this is my chance. I want you to go to that 
meeting and tell them I can still let the world 
know my wishes. Those pictures must be 
secured for Dublin; tell them I cannot rise or 
get rest: it tortures me. Do you believe me? 
I am Hugh Lane!" The last sentence was 
spelt out very passionately. Mr. Robinson's 
arm was seized furiously. 

These communications from Sir Hugh Lane 
are very evidential and convincing to us who 
knew him; to the scientific observer I do not 
think there is anything which could be called 
a genuine proof of identity, although certainly 
one fact was mentioned entirely outside our 
subconsciousness — i.e., that Sir Hugh was op 



THE COMMUNICATOR 55 

board the lost ship. It must be remembered 
that this was spelt out before we bought the 
stop-press with a list of the passengers. I am 
bound to confess that the fact that the com- 
municator was sq excitable on and after the 
sitting in September did more to persuade Mr. 
Robinson and me that it was really Sir Hugh 
than the whole Lusitania message. I have little 
or no doubt that the influence which came was 
actually Sir Hugh Lane, but I do not ask my 
skeptical readers who have not felt the tre- 
mendous energy of this communicator to share 
my belief. 

It seems to me that it is very difficult for 
persons who are not practical workers to 
criticise these very intricate psychical phe- 
nomena. The outside public is first thrilled by 
the supernatural nature of a communication 
such as Sir Hugh Lane's on the night after 
the shipwreck ; then comes the very natural re- 
action towards doubt, unless the absolute 
identity of the spirit is proved. I find, when 



5« VOICES FROM THE VOID 

I begin to criticise the experiences of other 
people, that this doubt increases until it seems 
almost impossible that there is a fragment of 
proof of survival in most of the messages 
which appear very convincing to sitters. From 
long experience, however, I know that it is 
best to suspend judgment in matters of this 
kind until one has had ample time to consider 
the circumstances. 

Let us, for a moment, consider this case of 
Sir Hugh Lane from the point of view of the 
convinced spiritualist; let us allow that the 
spirit of the drowned man made a supreme 
effort, and succeeded in speaking to us ; let us 
endeavor to analyze his position. 

The communication came through only a 
few hours after the sinking of the Lusitania. 
There had without doubt been a period of in- 
tense excitement and anxiety for Sir Hugh 
while he was still alive ; then a period of uncon- 
sciousness, let us hope, and then the slow 
awakening to find "all was dark," and that he 



THE COMMUNICATOR 57 

was no longer in this world. Did he speak to 
us as if in a dream ? Was he fully conscious ? 
Did he communicate directly or through a con- 
trol ? Who can tell ? Living persons who have 
passed through intense nervous excitement are 
generally dazed; their memories are confused 
and their statements are frequently far from 
accurate. If we questioned them at such a mo- 
ment about the past, we should probably have 
very hazy and distracted replies to our ques- 
tions. Take the case, so fresh in the minds of 
many at the present time, of persons who have 
just escaped the perils of a severe air-raid and 
have been close to the danger zone. How 
many of such persons could give small details 
a few hours afterwards of the circumstances in 
which they were placed — the number of the 
house they rushed into, etc. ? When we analyze 
the messages of those who have gone suddenly 
through the gates of death, are w r e not some- 
what unreasonable if we expect them to stand 
a cross-lamination as though they stood in a 



58 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

law court? If their answers to our questions 
are vague and unsatisfying, let us remember 
that we are speaking normally of earthly 
affairs with our earth-memories strong and 
fresh, and that our communicators' difficulties 
are unknown and probably incomprehensible 
to us. I feel that if we interest ourselves at 
all in such messages from the dead, we should 
extend our sympathy to the spirit; we should 
invariably assume at sittings that communi- 
cators are genuine. How can we hope to ar- 
rive at any fair conclusion if we judge super- 
normal circumstances by those that are 
familiar to us, without making any allowance 
for the fact that our difficulties are probably as 
nothing compared to those at the other side? 
Many persons appear to think that when we 
die we become possessed at the moment of 
supernatural powers. In fact, they believe 
that "we shall be changed" means far more 
than that we lose the body. I do not think 
there is any indication from any source that 



THE COMMUNICATOR 59 

when we wake again we shall have suddenly 
acquired powers other than those we possessed 
in the earth-life. 

The spirit of Sir Hugh Lane, after regain- 
ing consciousness and memory, found in some 
mysterious way that it was possible to send a 
message back to the earth through us. We 
had been friends of his, though not very inti- 
mate with him. In the dazed and confused 
state in which he was, he grasped at anything 
which would identify him in our memories. 
'Tray for Hugh Lane" came, he said, from 
the control who permitted him to speak. We, 
very naturally, asked him questions which 
would admit of concrete proof — the number 
of his cabin, etc. — and his replies were, I be- 
lieve, incorrect; they came slowly, I remember, 
as if it was an effort to try to recall these de- 
tails. What he seemed ardently to desire was 
that we should give messages to very close 
friends of his in Dublin, to let them know he 
had not suffered. He hardly mentioned his 



60 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

pictures, which were the great interest of his 
life; his state of mind can hardly have been 
clear and calm. Allowance should be made 
for all this by those who criticise the message 
in cold blood. I hold no brief for the identity 
of Sir Hugh Lane on this occasion; I merely 
take the case as an example. I am almost con- 
vinced it was he who spoke to us at this and 
at many other sittings, but I do not ask my 
readers to believe me on the slender evidence 
I give them. I ask them, before making up 
their minds that such communications are true 
or false, to analyze them and weigh and bal- 
ance the situation. 

Before I finish this chapter I wish to draw 
attention to a point which is a very interesting 
one in my opinion. Why should any influ- 
ence — control or communicator — be attracted 
to the seance-room? What draws his atten- 
tion to the fact that a sitting is taking place? 
This is a question I almost invariably put to 
controls and communicators, and their replies 



THE COMMUNICATOR 61 

to the question are almost always the same. 
They state that a bright light attracted them — 
and the stronger the medium, the brighter the 
light. When I am sitting myself, and ask, 
"What attracted you to this room?" the an- 
swer generally is, "I saw a woman wrapped in 
flame." Sometimes they describe a brilliant 
light on the head of the medium, but as psychic 
strength increases the light seems to envelop 
the whole body of the sensitive. This light or 
flame appears to be pale — "a clear white fire," 
which seems to grow more vivid as the medium 
becomes more in touch with the "spirit world." 
I often ask the communicator when several 
persons are present, "How many people can 
you see in this room?" Generally the reply is, 
"I can only see you." But if any particularly 
sensitive person is there, the traveler moves 
towards him, and, having apparently had a 
good look at him, says he can see him dimly, 
as if in a mist. Voices other than the me- 
dium's seem difficult to hear. A question is sel- 



62 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

dom replied to unless asked by one of the 
sitters. 

I have observed that controls, when in doubt 
about some fact concerning one of the sitters 
or anyone else present involved in the message 
which is being spelt out, dart across towards 
the person in question, and make obvious 
efforts to get into personal contact with him 
or her. The traveler waits opposite the indi- 
vidual whose ideas it desires to analyze, and 
presses against his arm, or is obviously glad 
if his hand is laid for a moment on the in- 
dicator. 

Another interesting point is the association 
of the controls with certain communicators. 
Each control seems to have his or her private 
circle of acquaintances to draw from, and if 
you can "tell a man by his friends/' you can 
do so in the case of controls. Sir Hugh Lane 
never comes through any control but Peter 
Rooney, who professes to "keep the unseen 
barrier that is supposed to separate this world 



THE COMMUNICATOR 63 

from the other sphere," and who admitted Sir 
Hugh in the first instance. Eyen's communi- 
cators are most untrustworthy, and generally 
parade fantastically in fancy costumes of an 
improbable kind, whereas Shamar's circle is 
an interesting one. She is careful to send peo- 
ple who are worth talking to, and takes some 
time to find them. 

A curious fact, perhaps worth mentioning, 
is that I find when a pause comes while the 
control is seeking a communicator, or when 
the traveler is at rest for any reason, quite 
foolish and irrelevant little messages are liable 
to be spelt out. These are the silliest things, 
and suggest that spirits of the "poltergeist" 
type are playing with the traveler. I have also 
sometimes observed a struggle at the board. 
This is conveyed to the mediums by a very 
broken communication and very spasmodic and 
violent movements on the part of the traveler. 
We are generally told when this happens that 



64 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

one entity has had a struggle with another to 
gain access to the sitting. 

In the chapter which follows I shall speak 
of telepathy and thought transference and its 
connection with automatism, which is one of 
the most interesting subjects in the range of 
psychic study. 



CHAPTER IV 

Telepathy and Automatism 

'T^ELEPATHY or thought transference is 
■*- to my mind the most interesting of all 
psychic studies. When we have convinced 
ourselves by simple experiments that thought 
can be transmitted from one brain to another 
without speech, even when the agent and per- 
cipient are separated from each other by a 
considerable distance, we are in a better posi- 
tion to criticise and understand much that 
comes through by automatic methods. On the 
other hand, the ultra-skeptical person seems to 
me to be too completely dazzled by thought- 
transference results. Telepathy accounts for 
so much that one is inclined to believe it ac- 

65 



66 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

counts for everything, or at least divides the 
field with the subliminal self. Much as has 
been done by telepathy and the subliminal 
theory in throwing light on psychic matters, I 
believe that in the case of certain people their 
range of vision has been narrowed by too close 
a study of these two subjects, and it has there- 
fore been more difficult for them to take a fair 
view of the evidence before them. 

The first point for those who propose to ex- 
periment in thought transference is to discover 
who can transmit and who receive. These 
two qualities seldom go together, and the only 
method by which the agent and the percipient 
can be discovered is by a series of experiments, 
most of which are likely to be unsuccessful. 
When, however, the conclusion has been ar- 
rived at as to which experimenter is likely to 
transmit and which receive, a step in advance 
has been made. The simplest tests of thought 
transference are the best to begin with. Two 
operators sitting in the same room quitely de- 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 67 

cide what the agent shall concentrate on — a 
card, a number or letter written on a sheet of 
paper, or a person known to both of them. I 
have tried some of these simple experiments 
very successfully with Mr. X., who has re- 
markable power as a transmitter : the propor- 
tion of successful experiments of this kind was 
about seven unsuccessful against ten success- 
ful. In almost every case in which Mr. X. 
touched my hand I got the right letter or num- 
ber immediately, but we usually avoided con- 
tact. On one occasion, in the case of his 
choosing persons we both knew, two out of 
three experiments of this kind succeeded very 
rapidly. In the first case I got the name of 
the person chosen most vividly. I saw the 
name "William" written very distinctly, and 
asked at once if that was correct. In the sec- 
ond case, almost immediately after I attempted 
to "receive," the face of a mutual friend of 
ours came before me perfectly distinctly, as if 
it was a framed portrait. This picture came 



68 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

almost at once, like a flash. I find invariably 
that if the thought is not transmitted at once 
it is useless to make an effort to receive it; I 
find precisely the same result with automatic 
experiments in which a control acts as receiver. 
Experiments carried on when the agent and 
percipient are separated from each other by 
a long distance are often very fairly success- 
ful, I believe, but I have no personal experi- 
ence of them. 

I have seen more of telepathy in connection 
with automatism than as practiced in the class 
of experiment I have mentioned. I believe 
from long observation of many sensitives that 
automatism of any kind produces an abnormal 
condition in the sitter; I imagine under these 
abnormal conditions various qualities come to 
the surface which are dormant in the normal 
state. I think that clairvoyance may appear 
in a person (who shows none of that power 
otherwise) when at the ouija-board or when 
doing automatic writing, and I believe that 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 69 

telepathic powers are developed under the 
same circumstances. I think further that, if 
the atmosphere is full of some important pub- 
lic event unknown to the sensitive, it may reach 
him through automatism. 

I had a striking instance of this in my own 
circle. One evening Miss D. and I sat at the 
ouija-board, and to our surprise no results 
whatever came through. This was most an- 
noying, as we generally had most interesting 
sittings. We had given it up in despair, and 
Miss D. was about to go home, when I asked 
her to try once more for a few minutes. We 
sat down and the following message was spelt 
out immediately and very rapidly: "Ship 
sinking; all hands lost. William East over- 
board. Women and children weeping and 
wailing — sorrow, sorrow, sorrow." We had 
no idea what the message meant. No more 
came through. Just then I heard a "stop- 
press" being called in the street, and, wonder- 
ing what could have happened, I ran down and 



70 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

bought a paper. The news was that the 
Titanic had gone down. I believe that the 
name "William East" was incorrect — we had 
no one present to follow the message, which 
came very rapidly and excitedly — I believe the 
name must have been "William Stead." For 
from that day forth and for weeks after he 
came persistently to the ouija-board, telling us 
about his death and begging to be allowed to 
materialize, that we might be sure it was really 
he. Whether telepathy would account for the 
first Hugh Lane communication I am not sure; 
I am much more inclined to believe that it was 
really Sir Hugh who spoke to us. 

Mr. X. and I have had some very interesting 
sittings with Mr. E., who seems to have re- 
markable power as a transmitter. He is not in 
the. least mediumistic ; his presence at a sitting 
leads to most curious telepathic results. Mr. 
E. has lived abroad a great deal, chiefly in 
South Africa, and has many stories of adven- 
ture to relate of a striking kind. On two occa- 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 71 

sioris he sat with us, no other person being 
present. He did not touch the board either 
time. His "spirit guide" professed to come to 
us, and he questioned her as to whether she 
could give him any information about certain 
persons of whom Mr. X. and I had never 
heard. On these two evenings amazing tales 
were spelt out by Mr. E.'s guide, all the par- 
ticulars of which — so far as he could verify 
them — were correct. One of these tales con- 
cerned a man whose death had been very mys- 
terious. He had been found drowned in a lake, 
and it was never known whether he had com- 
mitted suicide or whether it was a case of 
murder. This man described circumstances 
before the night of his death which Mr. X. 
and I were, of course, quite unaware of, and 
which Mr. E. says were accurate. He then ex- 
plained how his death occurred, and described 
his mental state beforehand. The other tale, 
which was long and circumstantial, was also 



73 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

correct in every detail, with added informa- 
tion, new to Mr. E. 

Now, these cases may be taken in two ways. 
Either Mr. X. (or more probably I myself, as 
I am a better recipient) caught these reflec- 
tions from the mind of Mr. E., and subcon- 
sciously added suitable endings to both tales, 
or — as I must confess I think more probable — 
the communicators were the persons they pro- 
fessed to be. In any case I think Mr. E.'s 
presence influenced our sittings, and these 
stories, drawn directly from his mind without 
contact with the autoscope, may take their 
place fittingly in a chapter on thought trans- 
ference. 

Another interesting instance of the same 
kind occurred one evening when Miss C. and I 
were the sitters, Mr. Y. being present. The 
control described an old castle which had just 
been bought by Mr. Y., and told him the place 
was haunted. The hauntings, as described by 
the control, involved in their explanation a 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 73 

romantic story of old times. At last I said to 
Mr. Y., "Do you think we should let this com- 
munication wander on like this ? Does it inter- 
est you?" He replied, "Very much. This is 
the plot of my new play." Miss C. and I knew 
nothing whatever of the work Mr. Y. was en- 
gaged on just then. 

Another development of telepathy with the 
Ouija-board is the transmission of messages 
from living persons who are asleep. My 
Hindoo control, Shamar, is very fond of send- 
ing these to us, and lately two or three came 
through which I have verified. I was in Lon- 
don in December, 191 7, and spent Christmas 
with a relative at South Kensington. On De- 
cember 26th my cousin and I had a short sit- 
ting, rather late at night, about 10.30 or 11 
o'clock. Shamar came, and promised us some- 
thing interesting. The name of my cousin's 
brother was spelt out on the board; he de- 
scribed in what room he was sitting, and said 
he was asleep before the fire. The message 



74 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

was a short one, and I have not the record of 
it by me, but it was proved correct in every 
detail. 

After this the name of Mr. D. — an intimate 
personal friend of mine: — appeared. He stated 
that he was not sound asleer)7*ancl therefore the 
message would come in jerks, which it did. 
He said he was sitting before the fire in his 
drawing-room; no one else was in the room. 
I asked him to give my sister m message from 
me; he said, "Sorry, I can't; I shall forget all 
this when I wake." He then went on to tell 
me what had happened on Christmas night — 
quite a long communication — and mentioned a 
friend of his and mine who had come in, and 
whom I certainly should not have expected 
would be there. He then said good-bye, and 
that he could not speak any more, as he was 
getting more wakeful. This was an absolutely 
correct statement of facts, as I found out when 
I came back to Dublin. 

Now, I leave it to my readers to decide 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 75 

whether these last cases should or should not 
be included under "telepathy." Did Mr. D.'s 
spirit escape from his body and speak to me, 
or did I get in touch with him in some mysteri- 
ous way and read his mind ? I do not attempt 
to answer the question. 

The last instance of Shamar's powers in 
this way occurred only two nights before I 
write this. I sat for a very few minutes, at 
her request. I had been sitting earlier, and 
she asked me to sit again late, as she wanted 
to try an experiment, at about 12.30 o'clock 
a.m. She sent a friend of mine, who said he 
was asleep. He gave me a short message ex- 
plaining a circumstance which had been rather 
puzzling to me in a manner I had never 
thought of. I attached little or no importance 
to this, but next morning I received a letter 
from this friend, explaining the same matter ex- 
actly as he did at the ouija-board on the occa- 
sion I have mentioned. These communications 
during sleep seem to me to offer a very inter- 



76 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

esting problem to the investigator. I hope to 
make further attempts of the kind with 
Shamar's aid. 

During the sittings which I alluded to in an- 
other chapter, in which the circle consisted of 
the Rev. S. H., Mr. L., and myself, we made 
various interesting telepathic experiments. 
Perhaps, as these sittings were carried on 
under unusual conditions (I mean that few 
circles, so far as I know, succeeded in getting 
"blindfold" results at the ouija-board) I may 
as well describe them here. The very remark- 
able mediumistic powers of Mr. L. were dis- 
covered in this way. A circle of seven or 
eight people used to meet at my house once a 
week. We had two boards in the same room 
at that time, which I found was quite a mistake, 
One evening the Rev. S. H. brought a gentle- 
man with him, who was quite unknown to me, 
and asked me to sit with him. Mr. L. had 
never done much psychic work before. He 
and I tried to get results in the usual way, with 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 77 

open eyes, but though the traveler moved a 
good deal, no word or sentence was spelt. 
After a short time the Rev. S. H., who had 
often attempted blindfold work with me with 
no success, suggested that Mr. L. and I should 
try the experiment. I laughed, and said it was 
hardly likely that we should succeed, consider- 
ing we had not got one coherent sentence or 
even a word with open eyes. However, we 
were both blindfolded, and almost immediately 
messages began to come through, to our 
amazement. That night we had three short 
but quite coherent messages. We then decided 
to sit regularly; the Rev. S. H. joined us, and 
Mr. W., who was an expert shorthand-writer, 
kindly undertook to read the board and record 
for us. We arranged that he should do this 
silently, so that none of us sitters should know 
what was spelt out. We chatted to each other, 
and often when we were laughing Mr. W. 
would tell us something very tragic was com- 
ing through. These sittings continued for a 



78 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

year or more, twice weekly; we never had an 
evening without ample and generally interest- 
ing results. The method of blindfolding was 
as follows : A close black satin mask was fitted 
for each sitter; no glimpse of the board could 
be had through these unless the head was tilted 
far back. We did not consider these masks 
sufficient for "test" conditions, however, so 
when visitors were present we wore outside 
our masks opaque veils of black cotton ma- 
terial extending from the forehead to the 
waist, which greatly added to our discomfort. 
During these sittings we had a most remark- 
able prophecy about the Balkan War which 
had just broken out. We had long messages in 
French and German, and we did many inter- 
esting experiments, some of which I have de- 
scribed in Chapter II. Early in the course of 
these sittings Peter Rooney appeared, and as- 
sisted us in every way. He was most amusing 
in the manner in which he reproved us if we 
missed a sitting, declaring he had wasted his 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 79 

time waiting for us, and grumbling steadily for 
the first quarter of an hour. Peter Rooney 
has undoubted telepathic power as a receiver. 
He seems sometimes to require a human mind 
to work through, and sometimes he can do 
without, which is strange. One of the cases 
in which he was able to read something un- 
known to any sitter present was when he spelt 
out the sheet of the calendar which I described 
in Chapter II, and in that instance it is just 
possible, though very unlikely, that Mr. L. may 
have had a "picture" of the sheet in his sub- 
conscious mind. Other times, when letters, 
words, numbers, or colors were placed under 
the glass, they were generally known to at least 
one person present. I remember on one occa- 
sion when the Rev. S. H. was observing, Mr. 
L. and I being the sitters, the Rev. S. H. wrote 
a number on a scrap of paper and asked Peter 
to read it from his mind (he did not lay it 
on the board). Peter paused, then gave 3, 
which was wrong — the number was 5. The 



80 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

Rev. S. H. told him he was mistaken; Peter 
then asked the Rev. S. H. to touch Mr. L/s 
hand, and when he did so spelt out 5 immedi- 
ately. Another way in which we tested Peter's 
powers of thought transference was by the ob- 
server taking a scrap of colored paper at ran- 
dom from a box and laying it on the board 
without seeing it. In the case when I was 
sitting this invariably succeeded. Peter touched 
the color with the traveler, and spelt it out cor- 
rectly without apparent difficulty. What 
seemed curious was that another lady sat with 
Mr. L. and the Rev. S. H. several times at my 
house, and although the fact of her taking my 
place made no difference whatever otherwise, 
Peter, could do no "color-reading" with her. 

Another case in which Peter failed to work 
without a transmitter occurred at Sir William 
Barrett's house at Kingstown one evening 
when Dr. MacDougall of Oxford was present 
I had arranged that in my absence one of my 
maids should disarrange my drawing-room in 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 81 

some way unknown to me; that she should de- 
cide beforehand what she would do, write it 
down, and give it to me to take to the sitting 
in a sealed envelope. I hoped that Peter would 
go to my house — which was six miles away — 
and bring me an account of what my maid had 
done to the room, which could be verified by 
my opening the envelope. This experiment 
was a total failure. Peter went off to my 
house obediently when we told him what was 
wanting, and for full three-quarters of an hour 
the traveler never moved. When at last he 
came back he was indignant, and asked how 
we could have given him all this trouble when 
there were no human eyes to see through. It 
was one of the experiences which fully con- 
vinced us that our own will, desire, and inten- 
tion had little or nothing to do with the results 
obtained. 

Our telepathic experiments with Peter had 
exactly the same results as those carried on 
between two living human beings. Peter is 



82 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

evidently very receptive of thought, and usu- 
ally requires a transmitter whose mind he 
can read. 

After this circle had broken up and these 
first sittings had come to an end (Mr. L. left 
Dublin soon after), the Rev. S. H. and I were 
sure he and I should get blindfold experiments 
through. We were mistaken, however; for 
months we tried patiently evening after even- 
ing with no results whatever, blindfold or 
otherwise! We both seemed to have lost all 
power to do automatic work of any kind. 

One evening about seven or eight months 
after Mr. L. had gone away, Mr. X. and an- 
other friend were at my house, and it occurred 
to me that we might try the ouija-board as a 
mild amusement. Mr. W. and I tried first, 
with little or no success; then Mr. X. sat with 
me, and the traveler flew about and spelt out 
messages in great style. Since then (four or 
five years ago) Mr. X. and I have sat con- 
stantly, and Peter has come to us and helped 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 83 

us to get blindfold work through. The results 
were not so sure as those which came through 
with Mr. L., but Peter has done test work for 
us, telepathic experiments, etc. I find that in 
these experiments the particular sitter natur- 
ally makes an immense difference. If Mr. Y. 
is present at a sitting and he concentrates on a 
card, number, or letter, or even a word, the 
proportion of successful results is very large 
compared to those achieved through other sit- 
ters. Mr. Y. is not a sitter himself, but he has 
a very remarkable influence on a seance, and 
undoubtedly he has great power of conveying 
thought to controls. The mere fact that he has 
glanced at the word or number to be conveyed 
seems to make it clear to Peter. 

Before I close this chapter perhaps I should 
say a few words about telepathy during hyp- 
notic trance. Of this I have only slight experi- 
ence, and I shall not go outside what has come 
under my personal notice. The Rev. S. H. is 
an expert hypnotist, and he has frequently 



84 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

hypnotized Mr. X. and me and other friends 
of mine. We found that ouija-work, blindfold 
and otherwise, could be accomplished under 
these trance conditions, though the messages 
were spelt out slowly and nothing of special 
interest came through. Lately we had the fol- 
lowing results in thought transference, etc., 
under hypnotism. The subjects were Mr. X. 
and myself, and I do not think we had got 
beyond an early stage of trance in any instance. 
On one of these occasions the Rev. S. H. 
tried to convey "taste" to Mr. X. He did so 
in this way: Having got his subject into a 
sufficiently drowsy condition, which took about 
five minutes, the Rev. S. H. tasted first salt, 
then sugar, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and 
lastly ginger. In each case after tasting he 
took Mr. X/s hand, and suggested that he was 
tasting something, and asked what it was. In 
every case but one Mr. X. recognized immedi- 
ately what was in the Rev. S. H/s mouth at 
the time, smacking his lips when the sugar's 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 85 

turn came! The ginger was the only case not 
perfectly successful. Mr. X. thought it was 
cloves, but by that time the Rev. S. H. had 
tasted so many condiments that it might well 
have been difficult to catch the exact flavor of 
this last one! 

At another sitting, the Rev. S. H., having 
hypnotized Mr. X. and me, tried the following 
experiments with us : He held any object picked 
up at random in the room in one hand, while 
with the other he took the hand of Mr. X., 
concentrated his own thought on the object, 
and asked what it was. The first object chosen 
was a fountain-pen. Mr. X. almost immedi- 
ately described the object as "long, "black, and 
thin," but couldn't say exactly what it was. 
The second chosen was a penny. Mr. X. de- 
scribed it as "rather small, flat, and round," 
but did not see anything further. The third, 
a roll of paper, was a complete failure; it pro- 
duced no impression whatever. 

Similar experiments were then tried with 



86 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

myself as the subject. The first object at- 
tempted was a round crystal. I saw some- 
thing round and luminous which seemed full 
of reflections, and which appeared to retreat 
from my eyes, become tiny, and then enlarge 
again. I could not say what it was. The sec- 
ond object was an ordinary briar- wood pipe. 
After a minute or two I knew that whatever 
it was it had two dark colors, was not lumin- 
ous, and was oval in shape. I got no more 
than this. The pipe was dark-brown wood 
with a black mouth-piece, and had an oval 
bowl, which the Rev. S. H. held in his hand. 
I did not visualize the stem of the pipe, which 
his hand did not touch. 

Further experiments done the same evening 
were as follows : While still hypnotized, Mr. 
X. and I were put sitting at the ouija-board, 
our hands on the traveler. When we touched 
it, it began, as usual, to move rapidly. The 
Rev. S. H. suggested forcibly that no control 
should come. He then concentrated his mind 



TELEPATHY AND AUTOMATISM 87 

on the word "butter/' and very slowly and 
with much fumbling, I believe, the word was 
distinctly spelt out on the board. 

The next experiment, in which the Rev. S. 
H. concentrated on one letter on the board, 
pointing to it with his finger while he held a 
hand of one or other sitter, failed with both 
of us. The Rev. S. H. suggested that it was 
very difficult to concentrate satisfactorily on 
a single letter when the whole alphabet was 
spread before him. 

The last of these little experiments was that 
the Rev. S. H. held one of my hands, the other 
being on the traveler. My control, Shamar, 
spelt out her name. The Rev. S. H. asked her 
whether if he held an object under the table 
she could tell him what it was. She said she 
would try. He held a match-box underneath 
the table. The traveler moved over to the edge 
of the table where it was tilted over, touching 
it lightly, and slowly spelt out "paper." The 
Rev. S. H. said, "So far right, but describe it 



86 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

further." Having had another look at it, 
Shamar spelt out "box" and then "match." 

I describe these experiments as Mr. D., who 
was recording them at the time, took them 
down, as I myself was in a state of hypnotic 
sleep. From my own experience, I consider 
that no field of psychic study offers more in- 
teresting possibilities than telepathy, and es- 
pecially so when practiced through autom- 
atism with the control. In some of the cases 
I mention no conclusion seemed possible, other 
than that an external and intelligent influence 
was at work in co-operation with us. In the 
case of these latter experiments we are, how- 
ever, not dealing with a possible external entity 
but are face to face with the, as yet, almost 
unexplained possibilities and mysteries of the 
subconscious mind, whose abysmal depths 
afford a fascinating field for investigation to 
those who are not directly interested in the sub- 
ject of survival after death. 



CHAPTER V 
"Prevision" 

T TAD I not decided that this would be purely 

*• -*• a record of my personal experiences, I 
should make an attempt to speak of "clair- 
voyance" in the full sense of the word, but my 
space is limited, and what may be called "pre- 
vision" is the only kind of clairvoyance with 
which I have come into touch and of which 
I have had first-hand evidence. Prevision is, 
I think, an inexplicable faculty, but it is a 
power which some persons undeniably possess, 
and, allowing that an external agent is at work, 
in automatic experiments one meets certain 
controls who also possess the marvelous quality 
of looking into the future. 

89 



90 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

I think, I may say I believe, that a living 
person, through what I can best describe as 
his "atmosphere," attracts or repels certain in- 
dividuals as that atmosphere may be sym- 
pathetic or antipathetic to them, and thus the 
clairvoyant, who is supersensitive, may be en- 
abled to reach farther than the average indi- 
vidual, and enter for the moment into the 
associations and memory of a person whose 
atmosphere is sympathetic to him. In the 
frequent instances in which a clairvoyant, 
perfectly successful with one person, fails 
totally with another, I think this is the explana- 
tion. An antipathetic atmosphere must make 
it almost impossible for the sensitive to grasp 
the past, present, and future of an individual 
psychically out of touch with him. One real- 
izes this when one considers how apparently 
unreasonable one's likes and dislikes to certain 
people are, which I account for in the same 
way. 

With regard to prevision, while it is com- 



"PREVISION" 91 

paratively easy to explain how the sensitive can 
describe past and present situations by saying 
that the subject may convey these impressions 
telepathically to the clairvoyant, in the case of 
prevision of future events no such explana- 
tion — so far as we are aware — can be offered. 
We may carry about with us the more impor- 
tant future events of our lives, and if so, we 
may be able to transmit them subconsciously 
to the sensitive. But who has had any proof 
of this? I am unable to entertain any doubt 
whatever that certain persons possess the 
power of prevision, more especially when they 
attempt to foretell the future to a really sym- 
pathetic subject. I have had some amazing in- 
stances of this in my own experience. If free- 
will has no existence at all, and if events are 
predetermined from birth to death, it is con- 
ceivable that we carry the future as well as the 
past and present with us ; but allowing that we 
are in any way agents in determining our own 
fate, how does the clairvoyant foretell our des- 



92 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

tiny, which is as yet undetermined? Of 
course, when we use the term "prevision" we 
must bear in mind that there are many degrees 
of that power. In some cases only a glimpse 
of the future a very short way ahead is per- 
mitted, and in cases of this kind the view is 
very narrow and restricted; the clairvoyant 
gets on one line, as it were, and sees nothing 
beyond or beside it. On the other hand, in 
my own experience, I have had my past and 
present pictured most accurately and my 
future for four years ahead, and this reading 
included the most unlikely and important 
events. A point which is interesting is that, 
unless in exceptional cases, the "fortune-teller" 
seldom foresees great public events, such as 
the War. This, again, substantiates my con- 
tention that the personal atmosphere is the 
window by which the clairvoyant is permitted 
to gaze into the future. 

To illustrate what I speak of I shall give 
three cases of prevision or prophecy, all of 



"PREVISION" 93 

which concerned myself, and which demon- 
strate three entirely different degrees of this 
power. The first of these "readings of the 
future" was a most remarkable one. Mrs. S., 
the lady I mentioned before in connection with 
my letter to Miss C, was the sensitive. I 
visited this lady in June, 1914. She knew 
nothing whatever about me, not even my name, 
and she did not even recognize the fact that I 
am Irish by birth. She persisted that I was 
American! Mrs. S. did not focus her clair- 
voyant power by cards, crystal, or any of the 
usual methods, nor did she look at my hand 
or even hold it. She merely sat opposite me 
and told me the most astonishing things ! She 
recognized immediately that I had done psychic 
work, and said that fact helped her. She de- 
scribed my past for fifteen years back, my pres- 
ent position, and the future for four years 
ahead, a prediction which seemed so preposter- 
ous that, though I took down what she said, I 
could not let such improbabilities weigh on my 



94 VOICES FEOM THE VOID 

mind. And yet she made no mistake in any 
particular. 

The circumstances were as follows: In De- 
cember, 191 3, we had moved into a new house, 
and spent a great deal on fitting it up, etc. As 
my husband was a physician, practicing in 
Dublin, he and I considered we had settled 
down for practically the rest of our lives there. 
Mrs. S. prophesied that two years after I saw 
her I should leave this house, and that my hus- 
band would go away from me. She could not 
tell why, but he would "drop out of my life," 
she said. "Yet he would not die." All she 
prophesied has come true, and the War — 
which she did not foresee — accounts for what 
has occurred. 

The next case I shall mention here was one 
of an entirely different nature. 

Miss M. has remarkable mediumistic power 
in many different directions ; she can do psy- 
chometry, has a great sense of the influence of 



" PREVISION " 95 

locality, and is decidedly clairvoyant, though 
in a different manner from Mrs. S. 

In October, 1916, Miss M. looked into a 
crystal for me, and described a scene which she 
thought was symbolic. She saw a tent in a 
desert-place — wild, dark figures crouching 
round, and told me this scene meant that some- 
one very dear to me was in the tent and would 
be in great danger from these wild, dark peo- 
ple. I could not place what she saw. My son 
was in India at the time, but his regiment had 
no prospect of active service, and I did not 
connect him with the scene in the crystal. In 
January and February, 191 7, however, a dis- 
turbance on the Afghan frontier broke out, 
and my son's regiment was ordered off to a 
desert region, where there was severe skirm- 
ishing for some time. What called my atten- 
tion to the crystal scene was a letter written 
by him while in this desert-place, in which he 
described his tent and the district in which he 
was in a way which immediately recalled the 



96 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

crystal picture to my mind. Now, I give this 
case as an entire contrast to the power of pre- 
cognition possessed by Mrs. S. She saw the 
future for years ahead for me most accurately; 
while in Miss M.'s case only one small event 
was pictured, though this one scene was very 
vivid and distinct. I have found Miss M.'s 
power for reading future events follows on 
one line at a time. She gets a glimpse of the 
future, and a very accurate one; but once an 
incident seizes her, she will get it again and 
again, and nothing else. 

The last instance of prevision I shall give 
was a very striking one, and of a very differ- 
ent nature from those I have already spoken of. 

Mrs. M., a remarkable trance medium, not 
professional, came to my house once or twice 
for seances. On one of these occasions the 
circle present sat round a table, holding hands, 
until Mrs. M. dropped the hands she was hold- 
ing (she was not under control, apparently) 
stared at me, and said : "I see a tall lily stand- 



"PREVISION" 97 

ing in front of you. Someone near and dear 
to you is going to die." I said : "You may be 
mistaken; it may be myself." Mrs. M. said: 
"No; it is someone very near to you, perhaps 
your father or mother. It is close; the lily is 
bowing towards you. It will be in a very short 
time and sudden." I attached very little im- 
portance to this incident, being of a skeptical 
turn of mind. That day month, however, my 
father died very suddenly. Now, this was a 
very clear and distinct case of prevision, as it 
happened that this was not in my subconscious 
mind; there was no indication that my father 
was especially ill until within half an hour of 
his death. 

So much for clairvoyance from the sensi- 
tive. I now venture to speak of a much more 
difficult matter — clairvoyance and prevision in 
connection with the control as it occurs in 
automatism. Here the question arises, From 
what source does this power come? If we allow 
the agency of an external influence or control, 



98 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

is the control clairvoyant? Or if we discard 
the possibility of any external influence, how 
can the phenomena be accounted for? Does 
the sitter become clairvoyant under abnormal 
conditions while using the autoscope? 

I cannot reply to any of these questions with 
any confidence, but as I have said before that, 
from my personal experiments, I am inclined 
to believe that there is an external influence at 
work, I am still further inclined to believe that 
in the case of some controls (as in the case of 
living human beings) we meet one occasionally 
who has the power of reading future events. 
But I feel it would be most presumptuous in 
anyone with my limited experience to attempt 
more than the putting of the slight evidence I 
possess before my readers. 

The first cases I had of prevision through the 
ouija-board concerned the very sudden death 
of my father in April, 19 13, of which I have 
just spoken. Looking up old records of sit- 
tings which took place in the winter of 1912 



"PREVISION" 99 

and the early months of 191 3, I find that three 
or four near relatives who had passed over 
came repeatedly, and in every case gave the 
same message : that my father was much more 
seriously ill than the doctors supposed, and 
that he would die suddenly of angina. These 
little messages were depressing, certainly ; but, 
though my father had been suffering from in- 
somnia and was not in good health, there was 
nothing to indicate heart trouble, and we at- 
tached no importance to them. And yet they 
proved to be perfectly correct. There was 
nothing especially evidential, so far as I re- 
member, as to these relatives being the persons 
they professed to be. In this case I do not con- 
sider, however, their identity was a question of 
much importance. The point that is interest- 
ing is whether some external influence, pos- 
sessed of clairvoyant power, conveyed a very 
clear and direct prophecy to me — a prophecy 
the details of which were certainly not in 
my subconscious mind — or whether a latent 



100 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

prophetical power was developed in myself 
under abnormal conditions. 

Another case of prevision from the ouija- 
board was the following: In August, 1916, I 
was in a very remote part of County Kerry. 
One afternoon I received letters from Dublin 
concerning the sale of my house, which I was 
trying to dispose of under rather hopeless con- 
ditions at the time. These letters decided me 
to hurry up to Dublin next morning, and that 
evening, before going to bed, Miss C. and I 
had a little sitting. Astor, Miss C.'s control, 
whom I have mentioned before as having 
prophetical powers, came and told me that I 
was right to travel up to town, that the ar- 
rangement I hoped to make about the sale of 
my house would not come off, but that within a 
week I should find a new purchaser and dispose 
of the house to far better advantage. This 
seemed a most improbable forecast of future 
events at the moment, as I had spent some 
months in fruitless efforts to get rid of the 



"PREVISION" 101 

house, and everything was against me in Au- 
gust, when few people were in town. Astor, 
however, was right. The arrangement I ex- 
pected to complete failed, and quite unex- 
pectedly a new and better purchaser appeared 
within the week, and the bargain was con- 
cluded. 

Astor has prophesied most stirring events 
lately for Miss C. and me, and so far, five of 
these predictions have come true. A year ago 
Astor was most persistent about a play in 
which Miss C. was much interested, and 
which he said would be performed in London. 
This seemed more than improbable at the time 
(Astor says he is unable to calculate, within 
a year or so, when an event will occur, and 
could not tell us when we should hear about the 
production), and now in the most unexpected 
way this play has been "put on" in London. 

I leave it to my readers to suggest an ex- 
planation of these cases of prevision through 
automatism. Is Astor clairvoyant? Or if 



102 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

Astor is merely Miss C.'s subconsciousness, do 
she and I become clairvoyant under abnormal 
conditions ? Or shall we put these readings of 
future events down to coincidence? I do not 
venture to make any definite reply to these 
questions. 

The instances of prevision which I have 
given in this chapter may seem trivial to the 
reader, but I make no apology for them. They 
may not be striking, but they go with all the 
other evidence we heap together to help to con- 
vince the world that if progress is to be made 
in the study of the Unseen, it must be slow to 
reject what seem improbabilities at a first 
glance. 

The most useful work the student of psychi- 
cal research can do is to accumulate results 
good or bad ; no sitting, however trivial, should 
go unrecorded. When possible, no case which 
might prove identity should remain uninvesti- 
gated. No psychic phenomena, however im- 
probable, such as chiromancy, etc., should be 



"PREVISION" 103 

despised. The smaller and rather tiresome ex- 
periments in telepathy should not be neglected. 
It is by the sifting of mountains of such evi- 
dence that we advance towards a clearer under- 
standing of what is now called the "super- 
natural," but what may some day be considered 
"natural" if we continue our work with 
patience. 



CHAPTER VI 

Mediumship and the Mental Sensations 
of the Medium 

I"N the four preceding chapters I have tried 
■*■ to record and classify some of the most in- 
teresting experiences which have come to me 
personally through automatism, the only 
method by which I have endeavored to hold 
communication with the Unknown. These are 
records of some six or seven years' work, 
which was never strenuous and always inter- 
mittent, and that for many reasons, one being 
that, although psychical research has offered 
me many fascinating problems and has given 
me many delightful friends, it is not my chief 
interest in life. Indeed, I will go further, and 
say I am glad it has never absorbed me. 

104 



MEDIUMSHIP 105 

This may seem discouraging to the en- 
thusiast but I make the statement advisedly, 
partly because I believe that, for the average 
sensitive, good results can only be obtained by 
great moderation in the expenditure of psychic 
power. Evil results follow almost invariably 
on too constant sittings. I am entirely con- 
vinced that, in practicing any artificial branch 
of psychic study or in the cultivation of medi- 
umistic power, great and incalculable dangers 
are run: an exhausted sensitive is practically 
useless for experimental work, and may lose 
his or her power completely, in addition to seri- 
ously impairing his or her health. 

When I speak of "artificial" branches of 
psychic work, I mean that work which is pro- 
duced by a deliberate attempt to obtain re- 
sults — seances or sittings of any kind, table- 
turning, etc. A "natural" sensitive comes 
under a different heading. When this gift ap- 
pears early in life its exercise cannot be 
avoided. Results come to the medium; the 



106 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

medium does not seek them, and probably in 
these cases they are not injurious, and cer- 
tainly they are inevitable. 

The "cultivated" medium who has limited 
gifts and who wishes to strengthen these 
gifts should be content with the limitations set 
on the work he can do, and should not attempt 
to force them in any way. He should never 
"sit" when he is ill or tired, and in his best 
condition he should deliberately make up his 
mind that this subject is not going to absorb 
him. 

In this way more satisfactory work can be 
done. When I reflect how irregular our own 
sittings have been, and that we have never 
ventured on more than two in a week, I am 
fairly well satisfied with the modest results we 
have achieved, and I am quite convinced that 
these results would not have been achieved had 
we worked our small fund of psychic power, 
more strenuously than we did. If all circles 



MEDIUMSHIP 107 

would be content to work patiently and slowly, 
not to become possessed by this one topic, and 
not to expect anything sensational, I believe 
the mass of evidence thus accumulated would 
throw more light on the study of the Unseen 
than they realize. In the formation of small 
circles many matters have to be considered, 
the chief one being a combination of really 
suitable sitters. At the ouija-board, where two 
persons work together, it is all-important to 
discover mediums whose respective qualities 
balance and assist each other. The control will 
generally say he requires "a negative and a 
positive. ,, What this means exactly it is hard 
to understand, but from watching many com- 
binations at the ouija-board I have gathered 
that a "positive" medium receives the message 
through his or her brain and transmits it to 
the board, while a negative possesses the driv- 
ing force — I mean that, apparently, one sitter 
supplies mental, and the other muscular power. 



108 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

Force is necessary, and the sitter whose brain 
and eyes are used does not seem to supply as 
much force as the negative, whose senses are 
less suited to serve the control. In arranging 
a circle for automatism, two sitters should be 
chosen who possess respectively the qualities I 
mention as far as can be discovered. A quick, 
intelligent recorder should be the third element. 
Great care, accuracy, and rapidity are neces- 
sary to read the ouija-board, and this office 
should be taken entirely off the sitters' 
shoulders. They should be in a quiet and re- 
laxed state of mind — in fact, the less they 
realize what is taking place the better. 

The gift of "seeing without eyes" is cer- 
tainly comparatively rare. I have sought dili- 
gently for mediums who possess the power of 
working blindfold, and find they are few in 
number. In fact, I have only met four out of 
the many I have tried who have this gift. I 
generally distinguish a blindfold worker by the 
fact that before he has had any suggestion that 



MEDIUMSHIP 109 

we should close our eyes he will close his of 
his own accord, and prefer to sit without look- 
ing at the letters. Blindfold sitting is very ex- 
hausting as a rule; I find it so especially when 
the control or communicator works chiefly 
through me, as it invariably does when my 
fellow-sitter is a beginner. Here I should like 
to refer to the mental state of the sitter for 
automatic experiments, for it is difficult for 
persons who have not been sitters themselves 
to judge how far the psychic is in a normal 
condition when practicing automatism. 

The crux in deciding whether or not an ex- 
ternal influence is at work consists in determin- 
ing how far the subliminal self plays a part in 
these experiments. No one present is in a 
more difficult position to judge of this than the 
automatist himself. When at the board I am 
not conscious that my condition is other than 
normal, but if I were asked whether or not I 
used my hand to push the traveler to certain 
letters I should be quite unable to reply. If 



110 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

I do this, it is an entirely subconscious action 
on my part. What I can state confidently is, 
that after a short time messages come through 
my brain before they are written down, and 
I am again unable to say whether they are 
suggestions from an external entity or not. I 
am inclined to believe they are. For sometimes 
sentences come through which are quite con- 
trary to what I should expect, and again, when 
I am most desirous that the traveler should 
move for me, it stands stock-still. 

I am absolutely certain that the sitters' con* 
dition is abnormal once the control or com- 
municator takes possession of the arm. In the 
case of Mr. X., he closes his eyes and turns 
involuntarily away from the board, and often, 
after a few minutes, gets into a state of half 
trance. He appears to become seized by the 
emotions of the control in communication; 
grief, anger, etc., overcome him, and if the 
emotion is intense he becomes hypnotized and 
is unable to continue the sitting. A point 



MEDIUMSHIP 111 

which is very marked in ouija-board work is 
the obedience and caution of the influences that 
speak. It is quite easy, as a rule, to get rid 
of an unpleasant entity; it is easy also to call 
up any special person, though I have a great 
objection to doing this, as it seems to leave 
the field open for fraud and impersonation. If 
a dangerous or unpleasant subject is spoken of, 
it quite amusing to observe the prudence and 
tact displayed by the control. It rather points 
to the subconscious theory. Only once in all 
my experience have I known a control make a 
really untactful remark. 

An interesting point I have noticed in 
automatism, as practiced by two mediums 
working jointly at the ouija-board, is the trans- 
ference of force from one to the other accord- 
ing to the nature of the control or communi- 
cator. For instance, in the case of Peter and 
Eyen the force seems to come chiefly from me. 
With Astor (who professes to be her spirit 
guide) Miss C/s hand is powerfully controlled, 



112 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

and I appear to add practically nothing to the 
force which moves the traveler from letter to 
letter. In the case of Sir Hugh Lane, Mr. 
Lennox Robinson's hand and arm are literally 
seized and pushed about so forcibly that it is 
most difficult to read the communications 
which come through. The traveler has more 
than once been flung off the board in a violent 
way with this communicator. 

Those who are inclined to dismiss what we 
psychical students have to tell as foolish and 
unconvincing should always bear in mind the 
difficulties we labor under. The evidence of 
survival laid before the public is at best only 
a small fraction of what we possess. From the 
very private and intimate nature of most of 
the messages we receive it is impossible that 
the really convincing part of our work can be 
exposed to the public gaze. Personal feeling 
constantly stands in our way. We may be 
quite positive ourselves that we have spoken to 
those we loved who have passed out of our 



MEDIUMSHIP 113 

lives, and yet a seal may be set on our mouths 
and we dare not say the word which would 
silence the skeptic. 

I have already said that the messages re- 
ceived from the Unknown, so far as I have had 
any knowledge of them, are essentially per- 
sonal messages. The control, and still more 
the communicator, appear to be out of touch 
with the earth, except so far as they enter into 
the "aura" of some living human being. The 
only instance I can recall of a message con- 
cerning a public event coming directly to my 
circle was a very vivid and perfectly correct 
prophecy concerning the Balkan War which 
was sent to us by Peter through a communi- 
cator who called himself "David Isaac Solo- 
mons," during our first blindfold sittings on 
October 19th, 1912. It ran as follows: 
"Blood, blood, everywhere in the Near East. 
A great nation will fall and a small nation will 
rise. Blood everywhere. A great religion will 
stand in danger. News that will astonish the 



114 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

civilized world will come to hand within the 
next week." 

A week after this message came the first 
Bulgarian victory — Kirk Kilisse — was an- 
nounced, and later Turkey fell and Bulgaria 
rose. 

I do not consider the news of the sinking 
of the Titanic an instance of information of a 
public event through a communicator, as I be- 
lieve that case to have been telepathic, and in 
the Lusitania case a personal interest was 
involved. 

Before closing this chapter I have only a few 
remarks to make. One of these is on the value 
of practical experiment. 

I urge anyone interested in this subject to 
try his own powers as a medium. Until prac- 
tical experiments are attempted, no fair esti- 
mate of the subject can be arrived at. Many 
admirable books have been written concerning 
every branch of psychical study, but the reader 
of these who has never been at a seance or 



MEDIUMSHIP 115 

used an autoscope has, with all respect to him, 
no notion of what he is talking of. As I have 
said, much that cannot be explained to the pub- 
lic is what is most convincing to the student, 
and I say further, there is much of what is 
convincing to the medium that cannot be ex- 
plained to the student. If possible, sit your- 
self, with the precaution necessary; analyze 
your feelings, and try to do so with a clear and 
open mind, not starting with any prejudice, 
religious or otherwise. 

The personal element is really the chief ele- 
ment in psychic matters. Messages received 
through the autoscope are usually personal. 
Hence the great difficulty in handing them 
over in their entirety for public dissection. 
Personality counts in sittings more than any- 
thing else. One uncongenial person can upset 
a whole evening. A cold or unsympathetic in- 
dividual, an ultra-skeptical or contemptuous 
person, is detected at once from the other side, 



116 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

and can reduce the results of a sitting to mere 
nonsense. 

Again, a sitter who is even slightly ailing re- 
tards results. The controls talk of nothing else 
when this happens ; physical conditions seem to 
count even more than mental ones. What is 
strange and entertaining to the observer is that 
the personal element tells as much on this side 
as on the other. I have often watched, with 
infinite amusement, how someone contemptu- 
ous or indifferent to a distressing degree be- 
comes keen and vivid when some element con- 
cerning his own personality enters into the 
message! Something said by a friend of his 
own, or relative, or, better still, a visit from 
his own "spirit guide, ,, who, no matter what 
nonsense he talks, can rouse and excite him. 
In fact, one of the interests one finds in 
psychical work is that it not only reveals the 
personalities of controls and communicators, 
but also human personalities. For nothing calls 
human emotions into play more vividly than 



MEDIUMSHIP 117 

this converse with the Unknown! Pleasure, 
anger, grief, joy, vanity, common sense, curi- 
osity, and wonder, all appear at the ouija- 
board, both in sitters and spectators. 

I trust that what I have said in this chapter 
may serve the purpose which I have intended 
it should — that is, that it may help the really 
earnest student to approach these investiga- 
tions in a sane and inquiring spirit, without 
prejudice, and realizing that great patience and 
perseverance are required if even a few 
grains of gold are to be found among the 
mountains of dross. 



CHAPTER VII 

psychometry through the medium and 
the Control 

PSYCHOMETRY is a term which may 
possibly be unfamiliar to some of my 
readers. I define it for their benefit, there- 
fore, as "a psychic power possessed by certain 
individuals which enables them to divine the 
history of, or events connected with, a ma- 
terial object with which they come in close 
contact." 

Incredible as the fact may appear, neverthe- 
less the evidence that this power exists is most 
remarkable and difficult to explain away. The 
cases of psychometry which I describe in this 
chapter have all come under my personal 

118 



PSYCHOMETRY 119 

notice; I have no gift of the kind myself, but I 
have endeavored to observe what has come 
before me carefully, and to note anything of 
special interest. I think persons who possess 
the gift of psychometry are not necessarily 
sensitive to locality, as one might suppose. I 
mean that it would seem natural that a per- 
son who could read the history of an object by 
touching it could also "sense" a place in which 
anything striking had happened. So far as I 
have known them, the psychometrists are not 
by any means influenced by locality. Their 
power manifests itself chiefly by physical con- 
tact with a material object. 

The first case I shall mention is one which, 
though not specially striking, had one feature 
which interested me greatly. Mr. and Mrs. 
M. were at my house one evening at a seance. 
Mrs. M. has remarkable powers as a trance 
medium. She is not a professional. Mr. M. 
mentioned to me casually soon after he arrived 
that he had found he had power as a 



120 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

psychometrist, and was trying to cultivate this 
gift; he asked me to give him something to 
hold which I wore constantly. I gave him a 
pearl ear-ring I had on, and he held it in his 
hand during the seance. Late in the evening, 
when I had forgotten all about it, Mr. M. re- 
minded me of this ear-ring, and said he had 
received many impressions from it. He told 
me many things about myself, all of which 
were quite correct and most detailed. He de- 
scribed my father most accurately — his appear- 
ance, clothes, occupation, and the house he 
lived in. Then he came to a tale about myself 
which concerned a man in India. I knew noth- 
ing of this, and told him he was wrong. Mr. 
M. seemed very clear about it, and said I 
should remember it later, he was sure. I told 
my sister of this, and at first she failed to 
place the incident, but a few days after she 
said to me : "Mr. M. was quite right, after all ; 
I have been thinking about it. The ear-ring was 
mine first; I gave it to you, and the story of 



PSYCHOMETRY 121 

the man in India concerned me." And she re- 
minded me of the circumstances which Mr. M. 
had made no mistake about — even to the de- 
tail of a pet dog possessed by the man in ques- 
tion, which my sister verified. 

The interesting point here was that telepathy 
from me could not explain the fact, and also 
that the ear-ring should have retained part of 
the history of the person it first belonged to. 
This reading made by Mr. M. contained, like 
most of the readings of psychometrists and 
clairvoyants, scraps of this and that. Every- 
thing in the case was perfectly correct, but the 
mental pictures came, as they always do, like 
cinema pictures — no sooner there than gone, 
and an entirely different scene revealed — and 
one of these moving pictures illustrated a scrap 
of my sister's life. Hence the puzzle it pre- 
sented to me. 

Another and even more interesting case of 
psychometry occurred with my friend Miss C. 

In June, 1914, a lady in London, Mrs. S., did 



IM VOICES FROM THE VOID 

a most remarkable reading of the present and 
future for me, of which I have spoken already. 
This lady appeared to get in touch with me in 
a most complete and rapid manner; she recog- 
nized at once that I had some power as a 
medium, and seemed to find that fact helpful 
to her. 

In May, 191 6, Miss C. was in London, and 
visited the same lady, hoping for a good re- 
sult in clairvoyance. When starting for Mrs. 
S.'s house, Miss C. received a letter from me, 
and, not having time to read it, carried it with 
her in her hand. Mrs. S. was not very suc- 
cessful with Miss C, and, having made a few 
not very interesting remarks, she suddenly 
said: "You have a letter in your hand from 
someone whose name begins with H. ; give it to 
me." Miss C. handed Mrs. S. my letter, and, 
having held it to her forehead for a moment, 
she proceeded to pour out my history to Miss C, 
past, present, and future, and this, as events 
showed, with perfect accuracy in every detail. 



PSYCHOMETRY 123 

Now, Mrs. S. had only seen me once two years 
before, and did not then even know my name, 
and she had never seen Miss C. and me to- 
gether, so that so far as she knew — even allow- 
ing that she remembered me — she could not 
have associated us with each other in any way. 
I consider this the most notable case of 
psychometry I have come across. The fact 
that Mrs. S. detected my letter in Miss C.'s 
hand, gave the initial letter of my name, and 
then, by some supernormal faculty, holding the 
writing in her hand, gathered a long and most 
complicated story from it, was, to my thinking, 
astounding. 

Another case of a different nature, perhaps 
almost as remarkable as the last, came through 
Miss M., a personal friend of my own, who is 
gifted with telepathic and clairvoyant power 
and can psychometrize in a most remarkable 
way. In December, 191 7, I was at a friend's 
house one afternoon, and met Miss M. there. 
My friend had brought a parcel with her from 



124 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

the country, containing a stone, a piece of 
mortar, a piece of charred wood, and a frag- 
ment of molding from the outside wall of a 
building. 

Miss M. took up these objects one by one, 
and, selecting the piece of molding, held it in 
her hand for a considerable time. She began 
by saying she saw a "place" in the country 
where it seemed dark — figures were moving 
about. She noticed one man particularly. He 
wore rough clothes, was not a peasant, and not 
a gentleman! She felt there was treachery 
about him. The "place" had a history; some- 
thing had happened there more than once. 
There were outhouses behind the place, and 
she saw animals being driven hastily out of 
them. She saw a fire smoldering there ; it had 
been a great fire. She saw a woman in the 
place and a man, whom she thought was her 
husband. The woman had far the stronger 
personality of the two. 

Now, the house in question had been burnt 



PSYCHOMETRY 125 

down three times. The fires had taken place 
at night, and it had never been discovered how 
these had occurred. The cattle had been 
driven out of the barns on the last occasion by 
some unknown person. The owners of the 
house were as Miss M. described them. The 
woman had a far stronger personality than her 
husband. I need hardly add that Miss M. 
knew nothing of any of these circumstances — 
neither where the house was nor that a house 
was in question, unless she guessed the fact 
from the piece of molding. 

This reading was very wonderful, I thought, 
and what puzzled me most was why the piece 
of molding carried this history with it when 
the stone, mortar, and wood told no tale ! Pos- 
sibly this was because the molding was a more 
essential part of the building. Psychometry is 
a complete mystery to me. I cannot form any 
satisfactory theory as to why an inanimate 
object should stimulate clairvoyant power as I 
have described. 



126 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

I have seen far more psychometry coming 
through the control than through the medium. 
I mean that in the course of recent sittings we 
have had a large group of cases in which vari- 
ous objects were laid on the ouija-table and 
psychometry was obtained through the help of 
Shamar or Astor, when no human being was 
present who possessed psychometric power 
even in a slight degree. These experiments 
have been made lately, but so far we have not 
tried any case in which no one in the room 
knew anything about the object placed on the 
table; so possibly I am wrong in classing the 
larger number of them under the head of 
psychometry: they may come more fittingly 
under the head of telepathy. However, as they 
all consist in elucidating the history of an ob- 
ject apparently through contact with the 
traveler, I add them to this chapter. 

In the cases I now quote various objects 
were laid on the ouija board. My guide, 
Shamar, purported to give us their history by 



PSYCHOMETRY 127 

touching them — i.e., the traveler touched the 
object from time to time, sometimes vio- 
lently, nearly knocking it off the table — and 
once when her own knowledge failed her by 
bringing some other entity better qualified to 
speak on the subject than herself. In one case, 
perhaps the most interesting of the group, 
Miss C. was one of the sitters, and the psy- 
chometry came through her guide, Astor, who 
seemed quite as proficient as Shamar in psy- 
chometric power. 

I give several of these cases in the order in 
which they came, but it is impossible to em- 
body the entire script of each in the small space 
I have at my disposal. 



I. Fountain Pen: Sitters, Mrs. Tr avers Smith 
and Mr. B. 

In the first case we tried in this way: an 
ordinary fountain-pen was placed on the table; 



128 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

it belonged to the Rev. S. H., who was present. 
(He was not sitting.) Having examined it 
carefully, Shamar told us that it had belonged 
to someone else before it came to its present 
owner; the man who first possessed it was 
dead; it had not been left to the Rev. S. H., 
but given to him by a woman connected with 
the dead man. Shamar described this man as 
a hard-headed business person. 

All these details were correct; it was the 
first and least remarkable case we tried, but it 
was interesting, as the object was quite an 
ordinary fountain-pen, which could suggest 
nothing to the sitters. 



2. Opal Set in Silver: Sitters, Mrs. Tr avers 
Smith and Mr. B. 

In the second case I quote a jewel was put 
on the table, an opal of a peculiarly pale color 
set in a curious way. Shamar gave us the his- 



PSYCHOMETRY 129 

tory of this stone from the time it was found 
in a quarry in China ; she described many per- 
sons who had possessed the stone, and how it 
had passed from hand to hand chiefly because 
its psychic properties brought misfortune to 
those who wore it. She told us of many forms 
in which it had been set; that it had belonged 
to a French Prince whose initial was L.; that 
he had been killed by some man deliberately; 
that after his death it had passed into the 
hands of a woman, who possessed it for a very 
short time, and that she also met a violent 
death. Her initials were M. A. 

Now, the owner of the ring was sitting, and 
he could verify several of the facts mentioned 
by Shamar — among them that the stone had 
belonged to Louis XVIth just before his execu- 
tion ; that he had had it conveyed to Marie An- 
toinette, in whose possession it had remained 
until her execution. 



130 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

3. Ruby Ring: Sitters, Mrs. Travers Smith 
and Mr. B. 

In the third case a very fine sixteenth- 
century ring, set with a large and beautifully 
cut ruby, was on the board. Shamar gave us 
a good deal of its history herself, and when 
her own knowledge failed her, she brought us 
a priest named Shamouni, a Zoroastrian who 
had worn the stone in former times. He told 
us he was the head of some Eastern occult 
order, and had had the power (when alive) of 
leaving the body; he said the ruby was full of 
magic, and had helped him to do this. He gave 
us information about the Zoroastrian religion 
which was unknown to us, but which we have 
verified as being quite correct; he told us that 
when the ruby was in his possession it was not 
cut as it is at present. He explained some of 
the symbols that are on it, and described an- 
other which he said was in the place which is 



PSYCHOMETRY 131 

now engraved with a fine head of Jupiter (ob- 
viously of Western workmanship). We in- 
quired carefully about this symbol (the priest 
traced it for us on the board with the traveler). 
We have succeeded in drawing it, and it 
proves to be the sign of Leo. After this 
Shamar came again, and continued the his- 
tory of the ring. She described it as having 
been presented to one of the Popes by some 
religious order in Rome, and it was handed 
down from one Pope to another. The owner 
of the ring was in the room, but not sitting; he 
believed the stone had belonged to the head of 
some occult order in the East, and he had also 
been told it had been in the possession of sev- 
eral of the Popes. Shamar gave the date of 
the present setting quite correctly; also the 
nature of the stone, which was not an ordinary 
ruby; the communication was very long and 
detailed. 



132 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

4. Cross: Sitters, Mrs. Tr avers Smith and 
Mr. B. 

The next case I mention is an interesting 
one. A cross was the object in question. It 
suggested little in the rather dim light we have 
at our sittings, except that it was embossed and 
made of some white metal. Shamar stated 
that it was made in Italy, the metal being a 
mixture of bronze and silver. It then came to 
France, and was sold to a woman who always 
wore it as a "kind of amulet. ,, She described 
this woman as beautiful, and a Princess or 
noble person. She stated that this woman had 
brought the cross with her to England; that 
there she had been unhappy, and had met her 
death suddenly. She was killed by a "knife," 
and had no time to prepare her soul for its 
journey to the other world, as she only knew 
she was to die a few hours beforehand. The 
owner of the cross was present. He knew it 



PSYCHOMETRY 133 

was said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of 
Scots ; it was a reliquary made of some white 
metal (not pure silver) enameled. Strangely 
enough, the word "Scotland" was in my mind 
during the whole sitting, though I did not asso- 
ciate the object with Mary, Queen of Scots — in 
fact, her name never occurred to me. The 
word "Scotland," however, was never spelt 
out on the board, which tells against the sub- 
conscious theory. 



5. Piece of Alabaster: Sitters, Miss C. and 
Mr. B. 



In this case a piece of alabaster was on the 
table. It conveyed no suggestion to the sitters 
further than a rather large egg-shaped pebble 
would — in fact, no one present recognized it as 
alabaster. The object belonged to the Rev. 
S. H., who was in the room; the sitters were 



134 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

Miss C. and Mr. B. The control in this case 
was Astor. A very long communication came 
through, in which it appeared that the object 
had come from the Pyramids, which were de- 
scribed with many details unknown to the sit- 
ters; the tombs in the desert and the funeral 
rites of Ancient Egypt were also described 
most rapidly and in very excellent English. 
The whole communication presented a picture 
of Ancient Egypt quite remarkable in its vivid- 
ness. It was only at the conclusion of the sit- 
ting that the owner told us that the piece of 
alabaster had been brought to him from one of 
the Pyramids. 



6. Silver or Steel Ring with Coat of Arms 

Engraved on it: Sitters, Mrs. Tr avers 

Smith and Mr. A. 

A beautifully chased ring was laid on the 
board. The metal from which it was made 



PSYCHOMETRY 135 

appeared to be steel or silver; a coat of arms 
was engraved on it, but that conveyed no idea 
to me. Shamar was the control. She said the 
ring was made in Italy, and brought from that 
country to France* It was sold to a man of 
high degree, a nobleman, she thought. She 
described him as being closely connected with 
the French Court. She saw him wearing 
scarlet robes and a closely fitting scarlet cap; 
she said that he was cunning and full of guile, 
not so much through his own efforts as 
through a woman's assistance; he was Italian 
by birth. Mr. B., who had just bought the 
ring, was in the room ; he did not know its his- 
tory, but the coat of arms was that of the 
Medici family, and he thought the psychometry 
clearly pointed to the ring having possibly be- 
longed to Cardinal Mazarin, though this had 
not been told him when purchasing it. 



136 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

7. Large Gold Ring, Finely Chased: Sitters, 
Miss C. and Mr. B. 

Astor said : "This was worn by a person of 
rank with a dark face. He was very proud 
and stood upon his dignity. He was involved 
in many intrigues of a somewhat mean and 
despicable nature. He was crafty and full of 
guile. He trapped some innocent people and 
led them to ruin, I think. (What was his 
nationality?) I would not like to say, but it 
was once in Spain; I think it was not there 
long. It was given to a woman as the price 
of her beauty, and that was not the end. 
(What country did the man belong to?) 
France, perhaps, but I think the man had 
Southern blood. (What was his name?) He 
was a man engaged governing people despoti- 
cally. He was tyrannical by nature, and he op- 
pressed the weak and caused great suffering. 
I think he was not long-lived, because he seems 



PSYCHOMETRY 137 

not to have died naturally. He was in some 
great trouble or difficulty, and that affected his 
health. He did not die in the natural way 
from age. (What country did he die in?) It 
was not in France, I am sure. I think he was 
on a bare spot in close proximity to the sea. 
He might have been a soldier. He might have 

been a I have got a name. I think it is 

Napoleon. (Why did you not get his name 
at once?) I can only get slowly into the 
atmosphere. ,, 

The ring was Napoleon's coronation ring. 

A locket containing Napoleon's hair was 
now placed on the table. Astor said: "This 
was not so close to him, I imagine. He was 
not so close to it, because I cannot get his 
atmosphere from it." The locket was modern, 
and the traveler did not come into contact with 
the hair which was enclosed in it. 

I have related these cases for what they are 
worth. In each of them the owner of the ob- 
ject psychometrized was present, and knew 



138 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

more or less of its history. I acted as medium 
and Shamar as control in all but two in- 
stances — that of the piece of alabaster from 
the Pyramids and in the case of Napoleon's 
coronation ring, when Miss C. was the me- 
dium and Astor the control. 

This kind of work may quite reasonably be 
described as "telepathy." I have not come 
across any case of psychometry yet through 
medium or control where no one was present 
who knew anything of the object psycho- 
metrized; but even allowing that these cases 
were due to thought transference, I think they 
are sufficiently interesting and remarkable to 
be recorded here. 



CHAPTER VIII 
Summing Up 

IN this, the last chapter of my book, I have 
set myself a difficult task. I shall make an 
attempt to sum up and lay before my readers 
whatever evidence I have received for and 
against the presence of an external influence 
working through us as we sit at the ouija- 
board. I limit myself strictly to my own line 
of research: I do not propose to go outside 
my personal experiences. What makes any 
definite pronouncement on this subject almost 
impossible is that, no matter what theory one 
holds, it is difficult to adhere to it rigidly, for 
the simple reason that, although the results of 
nine sittings might be accounted for by our 

139 



140 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

subliminal self or telepathy, at the tenth sitting 
something may occur which upsets and puz- 
zles us and leads us to believe that, after all, 
something supernormal has got possession of 
us. It must always be borne in mind that I 
write as a sitter, not as an observer, therefore I 
am in a position to speak of the personal sen- 
sations of the medium. It seems simplest to 
take my chapters in the order I have written 
them, and give my conclusions on each separate 
subject. First as to the nature of what calls 
itself "the control." 

The control, as I have explained it in my 
second chapter, is exactly of the nature of an 
intimate acquaintance; the word "familiar" ex- 
presses it admirably. We say, "Oh, here is 
Peter or Astor or Shamar," and we know the 
kind of communication we may expect, and we 
are never disappointed. Peter, Astor, and 
Shamar have always the same personalities, 
and we can count on the communicators each 
will call up for us. 



SUMMING UP 141 

Shall we decide, then, that once having de- 
termined the characteristics of a control, our 
subconsciousness supplies the rest? We have 
had a certain suggestion made to us, and our 
subliminal self sets to work, spins web after 
web for us; each web is woven on the same 
plan. We call our webs Astor or Even or 
Peter, but Astor, Eyen, and Peter are three 
suggestions which have been offered to our 
minds, and proceed to spin Astor's pattern or 
Even's or Peter's as any of the three names is 
spelt on the board. 

But now comes the question, From what did 
the original suggestion arise? Where did 
these names come from, and the histories at- 
tached to them? Had the circle been chatting 
about the East when Shamar appeared and de- 
scribed herself as a Hindoo ? Had the conver- 
sation turned on America when Peter Rooney 
introduced himself? I can say confidently, 
"No." I have no clue as to the origin of these 
influences. I cannot account for them. They 



142 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

are so vivid to me that I feel as if I could de- 
scribe their appearances and manners; the 
courtly, slippery Eyen, the rough and practical 
Peter, the dignified and simple Shamar, the 
fiery and headlong Astor, with his arrogant 
prophecies. The manner in which the arm is 
controlled in each case is quite different. 
Shamar and Eyen are smooth and easy, though 
the motion in each case feels different to the 
sitter; Peter is violent and erratic; Astor is 
amazingly rapid, and seizes the arm in a very 
powerful way. They quite remind one of the 
personages in Schumann's "Carnival/' which 
he explains as his different moods; Florestan, 
Eusebius, etc. 

The human mind has been described as a 
rock of which three-fourths is submerged in 
water; the fourth part, which is not sub- 
merged, is the conscious mind. It is a danger- 
ous matter to pronounce on the powers of the 
submerged three-fourths of ourselves, of 
which we know little or nothing; we may be 



SUMMING UP 143 

capable under certain semi-hypnotic conditions 
of much that we are totally unconscious of in 
our normal state. I consciously find it hard 
to believe that I, who have made no special 
study of India or Persia, could spin out long 
tales about the East without stop or hesitation, 
putting ideas and sentences together at a rate 
which makes it difficult to take down the com- 
munication unless in shorthand; but my sub- 
merged portion may possibly be able to do this. 
I feel that I have, as I said before, no explana- 
tion to offer as to where the original sugges- 
tions of these controls came from; no positive 
proof of their origin can be obtained, I think, 
and it seems simplest to accept their own ac- 
count of themselves and pass on to their work 
which they help us to accomplish. 

In my third chapter I summed up as far as 
possible the evidence I have of survival. In 
the case of the communicator, proof of the 
presence of an external influence seems to me 
stronger than in the case of the control. The 



144 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

control is very remote; he is vague and unsat- 
isfactory in his statements; nothing can be 
proved about him; we have to take him more 
or less on faith ; whereas the communicator has 
frequently made statements which have been 
a mixture of fact and fiction, and occasionally 
has stated facts only, without any fiction, as in 
the case of "Alice Franks" and the "Pearl 
Tie-pin" case. The only two explanations 
possible in cases such as these are — (a) That 
we are in actual communication, directly or in- 
directly, with a person who has passed through 
the experience which we call death; or (b) 
that in some mysterious and inexplicable way 
we have read the minds of persons who are 
not in touch with us in any way, and that for 
no reason which we can understand. I mean 
the minds of the living friends or relatives of 
the dead person. 

This explanation appears to me more mar- 
velous than the first, which many of us are 
inclined to reject because it involves belief in 



SUMMING UP 145 

what we call the "unreal." After all, if we 
admit that three-fourths of our mentality is 
submerged and that, one- fourth only consti- 
tutes our consciousness, are we qualified to 
pronounce on what is "real" and what is "un- 
real"? Possibly we see these words in an in- 
verted way; the large reality may be outside 
us ; at most we may only be permitted to grasp 
an atom of it while we are here on earth — in 
other words, our consciousness may be less 
able to grasp reality than our subconsciousness. 
I am not by any means convinced, but I am 
inclined to believe that under certain unex- 
plained conditions we are enabled to communi- 
cate with the dead. I think we have had, 
through the reports of the S.P.R., indisputable 
proof of premonitions of death in the form of 
visions of persons, immediately before or after 
they have passed over. In the same way, 
through the ouija-board, the intense emotion 
awakened by the act of dying seems to give the 
spirit the power to communicate the fact of 



146 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

his or her death by means of the sensitive or 
medium. The term "telepathy" may explain 
these cases, and also cases of appearances and 
communications long after death; but in in- 
stances such as the "Pearl Tie-pin" case, in 
which the communication came through a 
month or six weeks after the death had oc- 
curred, "telepathy" is a natural explanation, 
but we must admit that this is telepathy be- 
tween a living mind and a discarnate spirit. 

With regard to "prevision" throughr the 
ouija-board, so far as I have come across in- 
stances of this, it seems to me likely that an 
external influence is at work; I make this state- 
ment chiefly because of the extreme improba- 
bility of some of the predictions I have come 
across, many of which proved true, and which 
have made me smile when the messages were 
received. If prevision is not explained as the 
work of an external influence, we must at- 
tribute it to an awakening of latent clairvoyant 
power in our subconsciousness under the semi- 



SUMMING UP 147 

hypnosis produced by automatism. This is a 
perfectly rational explanation, and one which I 
am inclined to accept, but it does not quite 
solve the problem. Take a person gifted with 
clairvoyance in any form, and consider how 
difficult it is to account for this power of look- 
ing into the past or future. From careful ob- 
servation I believe that no clairvoyant vision 
comes except in a state of semi-hypnosis ; the 
mind must be quite lax and ready to receive the 
impression. I am inclined to think that these 
impressions come from some source external 
to the medium, who may have the past and 
present in his or her subconsciousness, but so 
far as we know cannot have the future. No 
psychic subject is more difficult than that of 
prevision, and I merely mention what seems to 
me the simplest and most probable explanation. 
Prevision through a medium who does not 
possess that power in his or her normal state, 
coming by means of automatism, is a puzzle 
which I do not venture to solve. 



148 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

The psychometry of objects through the 
ouija-board affords some evidence of the pres- 
ence of an external entity. In many of our 
experiments we have had persons in the room 
who knew certain facts about the object psy- 
chometrized; these cases can reasonably be 
called simple cases of telepathy, but I maintain 
that the telepathic powers of the sitters must 
be considerably heightened when sitting; in my 
normal state I could not possibly produce the 
results we obtained. 

In a few instances we have psychometrized 
letters or objects, the contents and histories of 
which were unknown to anyone in the room. 
An interesting case was a letter written by 
Miss V. to a friend of mine. The letter was 
psychometrized. The control (Shamar) de- 
scribed rather peculiar circumstances con- 
nected with two ladies concerned, and also gave 
a very detailed description of Miss X.'s room, 
furniture, pictures, and view from the win- 
dows, etc. — all quite correct. No one at the 



SUMMING UP 149 

sitting knew anything about the room in ques- 
tion. It seemed clear that some external entity 
calling itself Shamar was responsible for this. 

Automatic psychometry affords more proof 
that we are being handled by something out- 
side ourselves than any other branch of this 
work. Since writing the earlier chapters of 
this book I have had two most striking cases 
of what I shall call "human psychometry"; I 
mean the elucidation of striking events con- 
nected with the history of human beings 
through the ouija-board. 

One of the cases I am going to speak of 
afforded a more remarkable proof of the pres- 
ence of a discarnate spirit than anything else 
that has come under my notice; I may, indeed, 
call it conclusive. At one of our usual sit- 
tings last spring two persons quite unknown to 
me were present. I had no idea that they had 
any special object in coming to our circle be- 
yond a general interest in automatism. I sat 
with Mr. B., who knew nothing of the visitors. 



150 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

It soon became clear that they desired a special 
message from a near relative who had passed 
over a long time before. The name of this 
relative was spelt out quite correctly, and a 
message which meant nothing to me, but 
seemed quite evidential to those concerned. 
The sitting was a long one; it continued for 
about two hours, and the results seemed very 
amazing to my visitors. Of course, I was quite 
unable to judge of them, as the circumstances 
were unknown to me. 

A few nights later, when our usual circle 
only was present, we had another sitting, and 
the same communicator spoke to us. Mr. X., 
who had not been at the previous sitting, came 
in by chance and sat away from the board, not 
even listening to the message which was being 
spelt out. He fell into a state of semi-trance 
and complained that something terribly de- 
pressing was in the room. We broke off the 
sitting accordingly. 

We had a third sitting a few nights later, 



SUMMING UP 151 

and the same thing occurred; the same com- 
municator spoke to us, and Mr. X. came in and 
sat at a distance from the board. Almost im- 
mediately he fell again into trance conditions 
and appeared greatly distressed, complaining 
of some very depressing influence, and we 
broke off the sitting as before. Later in the 
evening the Rev. S. H. hypnotized Mr. X., 
put a pencil in his hand, and asked him to do 
some automatic writing. He wrote very vio- 
lently the same message again and again: 
"Send this terrible thing away; it's coming 
again." We thought it best to put an end to 
the sitting. Next day my sister, who knew 
nothing about these sittings beyond the 
visitors' names, told me a most tragic tale con- 
nected with this communicator; he had com- 
mitted suicide ! I had heard nothing whatever 
of this story before. That evening I arranged 
to go to the theater. About the hour I should 
have started I got a violent headache, and was 
much upset for about two hours. I was con- 



152 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

scious of abnormal depression, which took such 
complete possession of me I was unable to go 
out. I could not account for this attack in any- 
way. I have never experienced such sensa- 
tions before or since. 

This was, I presume, a clear case of at- 
tempted obsession, first of Mr. X., then of me; 
it seemed quite clear that some external entity 
of a most dangerous kind was present at these 
sittings ; it illustrated one of the greatest dan- 
gers connected with psychic work. 

I cannot urge too much on my readers that 
the greatest caution should be used in the 
choice of sitters, and also that unpleasant com- 
municators should be dismissed; the dangers 
of obsession are hardly realized by those who 
have not had some experience of them. 

What I have said in this book must be taken 
as simply distilled from my own work; I 
should be glad to put forward some definite 
theory as to the origin of automatic communi- 
cation, but I candidly admit that my experi- 



SUMMING UP 153 

ences have been so contradictory that no 
theory covers the whole field. I feel pretty 
well assured that we are dealing with external 
entities of some kind, and a few messages I 
have had, purporting to come from persons 
who had passed over, seemed impossible to ex- 
plain except as direct or indirect communica- 
tion from them. This, of course, is the point 
of vital interest for most people — this evidence 
of survival beyond the grave; it seems fairly 
clear that those who have joined the majority 
continue to exist in some form; nebulous or 
not, who knows ? The earth-memory remains, 
for a time at least, but whether the spirit 
speaks to us directly, through a "control," or 
only when dreaming, no one can say; the ex- 
treme uncertainty of the messages received 
and the mixture of fact and fiction point to 
the latter idea. 

Before I close I should like to refer to one 
more point which has interested me lately. 
Some people cherish the idea that much literary 



154 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

and artistic work might be accomplished 
through the agency of controls, or shall we 
merely say through automatism? There is a 
good deal of evidence, I think, that stories and 
poems have been written, pictures painted, and 
even music composed, by psychic means. Of 
the actual artistic merits of these works I 
know nothing. In our circle, poor doggerel 
has come through Eyen, and tales, some of a 
very striking nature; through him and other 
controls, plots have been unfolded which 
might well afford material for fiction or drama. 
What is remarkable when these fabrics are 
woven at the ouija-board is the amazing 
rapidity with which the pattern of the plot de- 
velops; the traveler flies from letter to letter, 
seldom pausing for a word; the story reveals 
itself quite as quickly as if one were telling a 
well-known tale. It would be flattering to be- 
lieve that this is a mere awakening of latent 
creative power in the sitters; I cannot credit 
that idea. These plots are certainly not in the 



SUMMING UP 155 

consciousness of the mediums. At these sit- 
tings one is reminded of deep-sea fishing; one 
cannot predict whether a flat fish, an eel, or a 
whiting will be drawn up by the line. Some of 
these tales are modern, some are ancient ; most 
of them are melodramatic, some very original. 
I am convinced that they come through an ex- 
ternal influence, though they may be tinged 
by the medium's literary taste. I do not antici- 
pate that artistic work of the highest order 
will ever come through automatism, but I 
think the development of fiction by the control 
is most interesting and well worth attention, 
whether one admits the presence of an influ- 
ence outside the medium or attributes this phe- 
nomenon to an abnormal quickening of the 
medium's creative power in a state of semi- 
hypnosis. I should greatly like to have the ex- 
perience of many sitters in this line of 
research. 

The question may fairly be asked, "Is the 
game worth the candle ?" With such small re- 



156 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

suits is it worth while to sit night after night 
and endure much dullness and fatigue for the 
sake of an occasional thrill? I find it hard 
to decide; I have been fairly satisfied that the 
dead survive, though the proofs I have had 
were not at all sensational. Surely that is an 
important point. I should be glad to give hope 
and comfort to those who have suffered during 
the past four years of war; whose happiness 
has been shattered by the loss of those near 
and dear to them. All I can tell them con- 
scientiously is that I believe the spirits of those 
who have gone out into darkness live on, and 
for a time, at least, preserve their memory of 
earth. 

So now that I have arrived at my final 
words, I feel I cannot have satisfied anyone; 
not the eager believer — for any faith I pos- 
sess rests on very small foundations; not the 
keen student of psychic matters — for I can- 
not say that I think these studies should ab- 
sorb anyone while the world provides work to 



SUMMING UP 157 

be done which brings in so much richer results ; 
and not the determined skeptic — for my in- 
clination is to smile at him as one would at an 
obstinate child; not to argue with him, but to 
leave him firm in his faith, for he is the really 
credulous person, the true believer in himself 
who never pauses to consider our limitations. 



APPENDIX 

HINTS TO EXPERIMENTERS AT THE 
OUIJA-TABLE 

DE careful that the room in which the sit- 
■*^ ting is to take place is a quiet one ; a noisy- 
street or sounds in the house are very disturb- 
ing to a sitting, a ticking clock in the room even 
may annoy the control. 

Be sure that the seats at the ouija-table are 
high enough to allow the sitters' hands to be 
on a level with it so that there is no strain on 
the arm and the hand can rest on the traveler 
in a completely relaxed state. 

The light in the room should be sufficient for 
the person reading at the board to see clearly, 
but not so brilliant as to strain the eyes. It is 

158 



APPENDIX 159 

important that the temperature of the room 
should be agreeable. Any discomfort to the 
sitters keeps back results. 

Not more than two people outside the sitters 
.are desirable. Any crowd or feeling of strain 
or even whispered conversation is sure to in- 
terfere with the controls. 

Everyone present should be calm and 
patient. Do not press for results. One dis- 
turbing presence in a room can ruin a sitting. 
Select those who habitually come to your sit- 
tings with great care. 

Be sure that you have all that is necessary 
for the sitting conveniently at hand before you 
begin. A silk duster for polishing the glass, a 
bottle of methylated spirit and some French 
chalk are generally useful. It is essential that 
the glass should be well polished and the 
traveler properly shod so that jerking and 
creaking may be avoided. 

Arrange that no one is admitted to the room 
during the sitting. The most interesting com- 



160 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

munications may be broken off by a servant 
entering the room or even knocking at the 
door. The sitters should rest at the end of 
every half hour or so. No sitting should ever 
continue for more than two hours. 

It is almost useless to sit in disturbed or 
stormy weather. Turmoil in the atmosphere 
seems to affect psychic communication. 

Never sit when you are tired and ailing. 
This is a useless expenditure of force and the 
controls will at once recognize your physical 
condition. If a control (no matter how 
familiar you are with him) suggests seizure or 
obsession take your hand off the traveler at 
once and break off the communication. 

Treat your controls and the communicators 
they bring with courtesy as you would any 
guest at your house. If they are undesirable 
you will probably soon discover it, if you ob- 
serve carefully. A mocking or discourteous 
attitude very naturally retards the com- 
munication. 



APPENDIX 161 

Never encourage communicators who pro- 
fess to have led evil and criminal lives. The 
fact that they tell you these facts generally 
means that they will eventually attempt 
obsession. 

It is best not to call up any special communi- 
cator. There are two obvious objections to 
doing so; it may bring the subsconsciousness 
of the sitter into play and assuming that im- 
personation is frequent it opens the door to 
fraudulent spirits. 

Do not interrupt your communicators with 
frequent questions. Let them talk as much as 
they will and only say what is necessary. 
Otherwise if you reflect on what has passed 
you will find the communication comes chiefly 
from yourself. 

Do not sit more than twice a week at most. 
It is far better to sit regularly in this way for 
a reasonable time than to have an occasional 
sitting of longer duration. 

Take a record of every sitting whether in- 



162 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

teresting or the reverse. It is only by heaped 
up evidence, good and bad, that you can attain 
to any conclusion as to the nature of your 
results. 

If either sitter shows signs of trance con- 
ditions coming on or becomes excited or hys- 
terical, break off the sitting at once. You can- 
not foretell the result if you continue. 

The preceding hints may be useful to begin- 
ners for whose benefit I have jotted them down. 
I have perhaps hardly emphasized enough the 
importance of the careful selection of sitters 
and the fact that good work must be the result 
of patience and regularity. Strangers in the 
room nearly always check free and satisfactory 
communications. The control or discarnate 
spirit or sub-conscious mind seems more sensi- 
tive to atmosphere than the living human 
being. 

Curiously enough I find sex is a factor in 
the choice of sitters. The best combination for 
ouija-work is a man and a woman. Two 



APPENDIX 163 

women sometimes work excellently together, 
but I have never come across an instance of 
any results worth speaking of being achieved 
by two men. 

Many inexperienced people think that be- 
cause a discarnate spirit professes to speak to 
them this entity must of necessity possess 
miraculous powers. "Can it tell what horse 
will win the Derby ?" or "Ask it when the War 
will end." These persons must learn that, so 
far as we can tell, discarnate spirits and con- 
trols are much in our own position unless spe- 
cially gifted with prevision, and that when this 
quality is present it is almost invariably per- 
sonal — connected with some sitter in whom the 
control or communicator is interested. Dis- 
carnate spirits seem to lose touch with this 
world rapidly; they have only an occasional 
flash of memory at most I believe. 

My last word to those who purpose to ex- 
periment in automatic communication is, be 
patient, be prudent, never let an unbalanced or 



164 VOICES FROM THE VOID 

hysterical person be present at your sittings; 
be satisfied with small results and look for 
nothing sensational, work regularly and do 
not let dull sittings discourage you. With 
caution and wisdom much may be achieved. 



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